Crisis Communications in Higher Ed: The Value of Preparedness

“Jaime. I’m sorry to wake you. A student has been shot and killed on campus. The gunman is loose. We are on lockdown. We need you in the EOC.”

It was 1 a.m. The voice on the other end was Winston-Salem State University’s newly minted deputy police chief. He’d been on the job two weeks. And I was exactly four weeks into my tenure as Chief Communications and Marketing Officer.

My heart had never pounded so hard.

Creating a crisis communication plan had been on my to-do list. It was even near the top. But my first four weeks had been filled with preparations for Homecoming and the inauguration of our new Chancellor. I’d get to it, I told myself. There was plenty of time.

But there wasn’t.

In the EOC, I was a bundle of anxiety. I didn’t want anyone to know I didn’t know what to do. But I didn’t know what to do. There was no roadmap. No plan. No templates or draft holding statements. Nothing. I was filled with terror that I was going to mess things up.

And I did. Fortunately, nothing beyond repair. But it was a night—and a morning—filled with chaos, uncertainty and fear. My initiation into a true life/safety crisis had been swift and merciless, a trial by fire. It was through this harrowing experience that I discovered the importance of preparedness.

And I vowed to never again be unprepared.

From that night forward, the words “preparedness” took on new meaning. My team and I built a robust crisis communications framework from the ground up. And we trained. And trained some more. (I even did an intense two-day, in-person training intended just for police and first-responders.)

My team and I made ourselves into a well-oiled crisis comms machine.

A few years later, my phone buzzed again: “Gunman on campus. Shelter in place.”

I looked out my office window and saw police running toward the building next door. My heart fluttered briefly, but then a switch flipped. I calmly stood, locked my office door and got to work.

And it felt completely different. I knew exactly what to do and how to do it—and so did my team. We knew who to call and what to say. We knew what was needed in every moment until the crisis was over. All our preparation and all our training paid off. It felt like we did it right. It felt like magic.

That’s the difference preparation can make.

This summer, take the opportunity to enhance your crisis readiness. Ensure that you are ready for whatever comes your way. Because we all know one thing: like death and taxes, crises are inevitable. And as my friend Alan Stein Jr. says, “Preparation is separation.”