There appear to be a lot of red flags that were not acted on by the university. If action had been taken earlier, it may have been possible to protect the victims and to get mental health assistance for the shooter/student. Every university residence hall has a res hall director and he or she would know that the shooter/student was dealing drugs, blaring music that disturbed other residents, and "cat-calling"/sexually harassing female students. I am not saying the res hall director is responsible, but he or she would normally be making incident reports and sharing them with his/her team in the office of student affairs. These kinds of concerns violate campus community standards. They also are red flags and the dean of student or equivalent would know that this should be reported to the crisis team to discuss appropriate interventions. The crisis team normally meets weekly, every Monday morning because so often things happen on the weekend in residence halls/dorms. Usually representatives on the university's crisis team include the dean of students or equivalent, the director of the student counseling center or his/her rep, and a number of other university employees at senior levels. Especially since Covid in 2019, universities are finding that mental health issues among students has skyrocketed and there has been an incredible increase in mental health issues with new programs and policies to address the need. So it strikes me as very odd that they did not know that this student was a ticking time bomb. MSM has reorted that several faculty knew that SK had serious concerns about the student shooter. And the student shooter had been kicked out of one residence hall, IIRC.Of course I don’t think that a lawsuit will prevent someone unhinged from killing again. However IMO his access card should have been deactivated already and he was still a threat until he was arrested.
I just mean that unfortunately in the world we live in things don’t change until something bad happens sometimes. If there were multiple complaints about him maybe he should have had some assistance offered then a plan for that and kicked out sooner, etc?
I work in healthcare and unfortunately a lot of things don’t change until something bad happens and people complain and/or sue.
I hate it and I used to hate the whole idea of lawsuits but just have seen too much and in this case 2 innocent people are dead and it seems like there were opportunities to maybe change that. I don’t know though of course and everything should be reviewed to see if there were things that could have been done differently, even to help the perp, you know? Maybe rules at the offset for living together, etc?
In any event, I think a lawsuit is appropriate and agree with OP who works in a hospital setting and has seen that things don't always change in response to problematic issues unless something as serious as a lawsuit forces the change. The same is true for many institutions, including higher education. Perhaps there are also legislators in the Colorado legislature who will work with the families and the universities to implement policies and practices that will help prevent this from happening to another student, even if it is too late for Sam and Celia.
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