UNG showed poor leadership in its response to student arrest on campus

I think this epic communication failure by leaders at a university that claims to be the leadership institution for our state raises serious questions beyond this campus, questions often raised after incidents of campus violence. Lucky for the school this incident didn’t end in tragedy.

Credit: Peggy Cozart

Credit: Peggy Cozart

Here is what we know about the incident from university administrators and campus police reports: On April 8, a student armed with a handgun entered the library on the campus in Dahlonega and made a threat to staff there. What the specific threat was UNG officials still haven’t said. But police searched the building with bomb sniffing dogs.

The student was quickly arrested near the library by campus police. Police later found an AR-15-style rifle in his car. He was charged that day with making terroristic threats, criminal trespass and carrying a weapon in a school safety zone.

The incident happened about 11 a.m. Staff, students and faculty on the campus where the incident occurred received an email about an hour after it ended. That email read that police had resolved an “isolated incident” at the library and there was no threat to campus safety. The university didn’t inform all faculty, staff and students at all five campuses until the afternoon of the next day through email. That email was the first to name the charges but refused to identify the student.

After many people began demanding more information, the school sent out a third email on Friday, April 11. It acknowledged those demands and reiterated the short summary the school offered in previous emails. It then said: “What makes communication in situations like this challenging is that there are legal and privacy protections, including FERPA, that limit what we can share about individuals involved.”

The implication was that because of the federal student privacy law known as FERPA, the university could not identify the person arrested as a student. That is inaccurate. There is no privacy right in FERPA about criminal cases like this one. By this time too the student had been placed in the local county jail, faced a bond hearing, and was released on bond back into the community – all public information.

The school reiterated that false statement about FERPA to the local newspaper, The Gainesville Times, the next week, which asked the school to state if the individual was a student. By that time the newspaper, like me, had the campus police report which identified him as a student.

At a town hall university administrators reiterated the vague legal “barriers” it faced when speaking about the incident. None of that was true.

We know none of that was true because the school changed its story when it finally told the campus community the perpetrator was a student in an email more than a week after the incident on April 17th. It also revealed the presence of the two guns.

This time the school claimed this new information could have only been shared at that moment because the police investigation was complete, as if that was a legal barrier.

That also was not true. The investigation was short lived and usually such investigations end when the person is arrested and charged. University officials knew from the moment of that arrest who the person was and had all relevant information from police to announce charges the next day.

It was clear from the start to many on campus that the university administration deliberately did not acknowledge the person was a student. We now know that to be true.

In an email to me last week, a UNG administrator admitted as such. That person wrote that the decision not to initially release the name and student status was “made out of an abundance of caution — not to withhold facts, but to ensure our communications did not unintentionally interfere with ongoing proceedings.”

This confession exactly three weeks after the incident undercut three weeks of false claims that “legal barriers” like the federal privacy law prohibited such disclosure. It also undercut the second narrative that the barrier of an ongoing police investigation stopped such disclosure. Those two were false because all along UNG officials chose to not disclose for the reason now given: it didn’t want to.

Why the university didn’t want to beyond the absurd “caution” claim is a hard question to answer.

We know the school wasn’t trying to protect the rights of the arrested student. He didn’t have any right to keep his identity and status secret.

Who or what was the school trying to protect? I can’t speculate on that. But one fact not revealed by the university stands out: the student in question is a member of the university’s corps of cadets. The university is one of six senior military colleges in America. This information would have likely been revealed if the university had followed that federal privacy law and given the local newspaper the disclosable directory information on the student.

Where the university goes from here in terms of transparency is an open question. Mistrust is rampant on campus. Soon, the school will greet Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth after the school’s president challenged him in a social media video to do physical training with those cadets on campus. Minus one of course. The cadet arrested has been barred from UNG.

Matthew Boedy is an associate professor of rhetoric and composition at the University of North Georgia, and conference president of the Georgia chapter of the American Association of University Professors, a national organization that represents the interests of college and university faculty members.