UA lends support in crisis situation

He went out with his friends and left his roommate of two months, Brian S. Balcer, in his pajamas, getting ready for bed.

Hours later, Huffman learned his roommate had fallen to his death from a second-story stairwell of the Art building. Since that night, Huffman and other friends of Balcer have gone through the steps of dealing with a loss.

"When it happened it was a total shock, and to deal with it we all banded together," said Huffman, an aerospace engineering freshman. "When it was all over, we were closer together as a whole."

With two student deaths in the last two years on the UA campus, UA officials faced the difficult task of handling a crisis in a compassionate way.

A Crisis Management Team, headed by Assistant Dean of Students Veda Hunn, was established to network among departments and keep everyone well-informed. University counselors and Residence Life members helped the students involved grapple with the crisis.

"I think we are a very caring community. Our first priority is the student body and we then work to help them with the trauma," Hunn said.

Robert Wrenn, a psychology professor who teaches a popular class on death and dying, worked with former Dean of Students Robert Scob on creating a protocol for crisis notification.

"Our main challenge is recognizing the needs of the community and handling the information in a sensitive manner," Wrenn said.

After years of work, Wrenn has seen the completion of a university-wide crisis coping system.

Once the family of a victim has been notified by the police or hospital involved, the dean's office is contacted and the team is charged with handling the crisis, Hunn said.

"It can be difficult to make sure that everyone is sensitive and knows what they are doing in a large bureaucracy, and I think we do a pretty good job of responding to a tragedy," said Kenneth F. Marsh, director of UA counseling.

The dean's office contacts the family of the student or students affected to offer solace and any help the family may request. A condolence letter is sent and other members of the university, including instructors and faculty, are notified, Dean of Students Melissa Vito said.

Counseling and Psychological Services is then contacted to provide counseling for witnesses or other people directly affected by the tragedy.

Marsh is in charge of helping students cope emotionally, and staying in contact with other departments such as Residence Life and fraternities or sororities.

"In my experience, there is a significant range in response among students that is very natural, and our commitment is to work with residents in a way that is appropriate to each student's needs," Director of Residence Life Jim Van Arsdel said.

If the student involved lives in a residence hall, a counselor meets with the hall director and resident assistants to ease hall interactions with the family and help students come to terms with tragedy.

Huffman said that, in his experience, the hall and counseling services responded adeptly.

"They treated us all very well, and even though I didn't need any counseling, they told us if we needed any help we could have it," he said.

Residence Life is also responsible for appropriately dealing with family of the student and handling his or her belongings according to the family's wishes.

"There have been some situations where something slips through the cracks, but we then repair the damage as necessary," Marsh noted.

For example, if everyone is not aware of a student death, the family could receive a bill for tuition or a schedule of classes, which could be traumatizing for survivors, he said.

"Every case varies greatly, but in any death or traumatic event we will bring in someone from the counseling center to talk to people," Van Arsdel said.