Every Monday morning, in the office of the dean of students in Cumnock Hall, representatives from half a dozen campus departments — student life, residence life, health services, counseling services, campus conduct, student disabilities, medical services — come together to anticipate calamities.

The information they bring with them comes from a range of sources: faculty, staff, residence-hall advisers, campus police. It might have to do with almost any danger-sign a student could be giving off: depression, aggressive behavior, an eating disorder, repeated drunkenness, self-mutilation, talk of violence or suicide, disturbing artwork or writing.

The meeting might result in nothing at all; or in a decision to watch a student more closely, or in direct intervention with the student or his family. In rare instances, the group might employ less conventional means — as it did last fall, following the violent deaths of two students, when its members went out on the Web, to check student messages on Facebook that might foreshadow further violence or despair. But whatever the problem or outcome, the goal is always the same: to get the student the help she needs, to avert catastrophe.

The initiative, known as the STARS (Students at Risk) program, is now entering its third year. Not long after it began, in the winter of 2005, it gained impetus following the stabbing of a UMass Lowell professor, Mary Hooker, by a student upset over a failing grade. A little more than a year later, in April of this year, came the mayhem at Virginia Tech. And all of this, of course, has been in the aftermath of the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado eight years ago.

"We make it our business to have open communication with all the parties involved — to have as complete an understanding of our students and their issues as it is possible to have,” says Dean of Student Life Larry Siegel.  “And not just to respond to today’s problem, but to be proactive, to know the pitfalls, to anticipate a problem before it’s right on top of us.”

The faculty, says Siegel, are an especially critical component. “Every student on this campus is exposed to faculty—they’re our front line of defense. Every member of our faculty needs to be aware of the signs and symptoms of a problem. They need to know how to recognize when there might be a danger, either to themselves, to others or to the student himself. And they need to know where to go when they do.”

To this end, the Dean of Students Office and the Counseling Center have assembled an information packet, dealing with possible problem signs, resources for help, preventative techniques, and conflict management, and shared it with the University’s department chairs and faculty senate, who will presumably pass it along to faculty.

The STARS model, Siegel explains, relies on a system of concentric circles for its communications success. At the center of the system is the Dean of Students office; the next circle out consists of those parties normally present at the Monday morning meetings, while the outer circle is a network of campus, community and family resources: the Registrar’s Office, Provost’s Office, academic deans and faculty senate, area transport services, the University police, local hospitals and mental-health clinics. 

In the wake of Virginia Tech, says Siegel, a report on school violence out of the office of the U.S. Attorney General identified five major factors — including inadequate communications — as being among the drawbacks to prevention. Of the five, he says, three were already being addressed in the STARS model. “So we really do feel we’re doing our homework here — “and we’re adapting and improving all the time.”

Six weeks after the Virginia Tech shootings, in early June of this year, the UMass Lowell STARS group met in Boston with the University’s Board of Trustees to promote awareness of its program. The Board was impressed; it recommended that STARS share its approach, a week later, with a symposium on high-risk student behavior attended by academic institutions throughout the state. The result has been that STARS is now seen as a model, at least regionally, for the coordination of students’ safety-net student services.

“Youth today are immersed in the violence of our culture.” Siegel says. “It comes at them from everywhere — TV, the movies, the Web. The result is that they have some really serious illusions about their mortality, probably more than at any time in the past. ...

“We need to show an understanding of this, both individually and as a campus. And we have to keep our communications open. Open communications, the sharing of information, that’s at the root of it all.”

Faculty, staff or other members of the University community who observe troubling behavior on the part of students should notify the Office of the Dean of Student Life, Larry Siegel, at ext. 2107. Your confidentiality, if requested, will be honored.