'Systemic Issues'

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U. of Arizona Admits Failures Leading Up to Professor’s Death By  Kate Hidalgo Bellows and  Sarah Brown March 27, 2023 Terry Tang, APA memorial for Thomas Meixner, a U. of Arizona professor killed on campus on Oct. 5, 2022.

On Monday, a bleak picture emerged of the University of Arizona’s mistakes in the months before a professor was killed on campus last fall. The university’s president accepted responsibility for those failures and promised change.

Thomas Meixner, a professor of hydrology and atmospheric sciences, was allegedly shot and killed by a former graduate student, Murad Dervish, while walking to class on October 5. Dervish, who had been making threats against Meixner and other faculty members for more than a year, was arrested and has been charged with first-degree murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

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On Monday, a bleak picture emerged of the University of Arizona’s mistakes in the months before a professor was killed on campus last fall. The university’s president accepted responsibility for those failures and promised change.

Thomas Meixner, a professor of hydrology and atmospheric sciences, was allegedly shot and killed by a former graduate student, Murad Dervish, while walking to class on October 5. Dervish, who had been making threats against Meixner and other faculty members for more than a year, was arrested and has been charged with first-degree murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

A university-commissioned report found that administrators and campus law-enforcement officials missed many opportunities to intervene and arrest Dervish before he allegedly committed an act of violence. The university fell short in managing threats, responding to concerns from professors and others, and communicating across departments, the report said.

“As this report reveals, there were systemic issues across our university that should have been identified and corrected,” the university’s president, Robert C. Robbins, said at a news conference. “I’m angry at myself that I did not do more to prevent this tragedy.”

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Robbins said the university would take steps to shore up campus-safety protocols, including revamping the threat-assessment team and implementing more training.

The 205-page report came from PAX Group, a security firm, and evaluated the events leading up to Meixner’s death, as well as the aftermath. According to the report, the firm spoke with 139 students, faculty members, staff members, and others, and reviewed more than 1,200 documents.

Meanwhile, a $9-million claim filed by attorneys for Meixner’s family alleged that the university’s inaction had “sacrificed” the professor’s life. The attorneys’ claim against the Arizona Board of Regents, which oversees the University of Arizona, serves as a notice that the family could file a formal lawsuit. The university has 60 days to respond.

‘Missed Opportunities’

The security firm’s report calls out an ineffective threat-management process and poor communication between campus departments and agencies as contributing to the university’s lack of action. (For more information on campus threat-assessment teams, see The Chronicle‘s explainer.)

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“There’s no one individual,” Robbins said at Monday’s news conference. “It’s a collection of a lot of missed opportunities and mistakes that we didn’t have our eye on the overall picture, and communication is a huge part of this.”

One key concern raised in recent months was that the university may have prioritized student privacy over the safety of the whole campus. Colleges are subject to Ferpa, a federal law that restricts access to certain student records. Fear of being sued under Ferpa may have led people with knowledge of Dervish’s threats to feel hesitant to share it with others, critics have said.

Robbins confirmed on Monday that Dervish’s threats of violence superseded his privacy rights and that the university should have taken action. Ferpa has exceptions carved out for health and safety.

“Everyone was so focused on his individual rights and his privacy that, for instance, others in his same building in a different department didn’t even know about this,” Robbins said.

The PAX Group report offers 33 recommendations for improvement, including ensuring that Ferpa training captures an accurate understanding of the law and its exceptions; conducting regular crisis-response exercises for the threat-assessment team and other groups; and creating smoother communication channels.

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Robbins said the university had already taken steps to improve its safety apparatus, such as installing locks on classroom doors and automatically enrolling university-community members in the campus-alerts system. The president shared that at the time of the shooting, he was in Washington, D.C., and did not get a university alert because his registration in the alerts system had timed out. Automatic registration, Robbins said, is intended to stop that from happening.

An interim report released in February by a faculty committee had criticized the university for, it claimed, “consciously and consistently” disregarding safety concerns raised by students, faculty, and staff about the former graduate student’s behavior. The university was highly critical of the committee’s report, with a spokesperson telling The Chronicle at the time that the report “represents the work of a subset of faculty that has reached sweeping conclusions based in large part on misleading characterizations and the selective use of facts and quotations.”

The faculty committee disbanded in early March, citing fear of retaliation.

Robbins said he met with the committee on Monday and apologized for being “critical and dismissive” of their work.

“The concern about retribution is direct and also indirect,” Robbins said. “By being dismissive and not fully taking their report for what it was, that’s a form of, if not retaliation, it’s disrespect.”

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Robbins also announced the appointment of Steve Patterson, a 25-year veteran of the F.B.I., as the university’s interim chief safety officer. Patterson will be responsible for implementing the recommendations outlined in the report and other safety changes. Since November, Patterson has led the university’s threat-assessment team, and he will continue to do so.

Pleading for Protection

The letter penned by the Meixner family’s attorneys, dated March 24 and made public late Sunday, also outlines a series of alleged institutional shortcomings.

After Dervish had an argument with Meixner over a grade, in November 2021, two faculty members reported Dervish to the dean of students. Dervish then sent faculty members a series of racist and antisemitic emails. The attorneys’ letter alleges that university officials initially declined to conduct a risk assessment on Dervish because he hadn’t made specific threats of violence against himself or others.

In January 2022, according to the letter, the University of Arizona’s police department learned that a protective order had been filed against Dervish at a previous university. It’s unclear, the letter states, whether law-enforcement officials conducted a background check or conducted a further analysis at that stage.

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The university expelled Dervish and barred him from campus in February 2022, and the dean of students issued a no-contact order between Dervish and four faculty members. But according to the attorneys’ letter, the university police department failed to enforce the restrictions, even though faculty members repeatedly reported safety concerns.

By September, the university police department filed a criminal report about Dervish with the county attorney’s office, but the report didn’t make clear that there could be an imminent threat to the campus, the letter said. Meixner was killed less than a month later.

“Many faculty members, including Dr. Meixner, pleaded over and over with all the ‘right’ university departments for protection,” the attorneys wrote.

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication. Campus SafetyLeadership & GovernanceRisk Management Kate Hidalgo Bellows Kate Hidalgo Bellows is a staff reporter at The Chronicle. Follow her on Twitter @katebellows, or email her at [email protected]. Sarah Brown Sarah Brown is The Chronicle’s news editor. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at [email protected].