ON MESSAGE

Managing PR Crises

No two controversies are the same, but some basic public-relations principles can help you handle the fallout

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By RUSSELL POWELL

While experience may be the best teacher, it's not something most public-relations officers covet when it comes to dealing with crises. Yet crises are inevitable if you have been in the business long enough.

During my career, I've had to deal with campus robberies and dead crows, students trampling on an American flag, and, tragically, a student publicly committing suicide. I've had to calm a college president who wanted to verbally attack a popular cultural figure at a public forum (it would have been harmful to the university and potentially fatal to the president's career). I cut my teeth in academic public relations on a student proclaiming to the world that he was earning his degree in Frisbee.

As that list suggests, no two crises are the same. They come in all shapes and degrees of severity. But there are some basic principles that should govern your thinking when it comes to managing campus crises.

The best way to deal with a crisis is to prevent it. An obvious example is the case of the college president above. He, and the university by association, would have looked foolish had he scolded the public figure. With some persuasion, he canceled his plans.

That incident was sudden and discrete. But a wide range of institutional decisions can increase the risk of a crisis, or can inadvertently set the wheels in motion for a public-relations disaster. Will a new dorm incense neighbors? What are the implications of a proposed change to a program to promote diversity? Can the college accommodate an influx of new students to its technology-driven film program?

It is essential that the college's chief public-relations officer be party to those deliberations and given the opportunity to contribute his or her perspective. It's equally important for a PR officer to anticipate potential disasters and bring them to the attention of the president so that the college can weigh the risks consciously before making a decision.

Even before the shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007, campus safety was a perennial issue on every campus in America. Yet many colleges remain slow to react to that threat, and have failed to tackle security issues with appropriate vigor. We are doing reasonably well at Elms College. We conducted a campuswide security assessment last spring and adopted some of the recommendations, including the creation of a new position of director of campus safety. Still, several weeks ago, two students and a friend were robbed late on a Saturday as they returned to the campus.

Fortunately, they were not hurt. The incident was isolated, and did not even occur on college grounds. Nevertheless, it worried students (and their parents), who suddenly feared for their safety.

It is essential in such situations to be empathetic, to communicate effectively, and to avoid reacting defensively. Put yourself in the place of a student or parent hearing about a campus crime. It's scary. For parents, their worst fear is that their child will be in harm's way, and their initial reaction is often more emotional than reasoned. For a college official to respond defensively, or fail to communicate the facts in a timely manner, will only increase everyone's anxiety.

When and how much information should be communicated to various constituencies is always open to interpretation, especially in the initial hours of a crisis, when the facts are still coming to light. You don't want to inadvertently add fuel to the fire by over-pitching it, or sending out information prematurely that turns out to be incorrect. Still, it's best to always err on the side of keeping the key players informed.

In the case of the robbery, our president held campus meetings with students and faculty members a few days after the incident, describing what had happened and the college's response (which included new security measures), and listening to people's concerns. On the Monday morning after the robbery, we sent out a collegewide e-mail message from the president laying out the facts, and sent additional e-mails that week as new information emerged.

For some people, that was not enough. But most seemed satisfied that the college had responded appropriately.

When dealing with crises, it's always a good idea to tell the truth. Obviously it's the PR officer's duty to avoid legal culpability and frame things on the best possible terms for the institution. However, many a crisis (see Watergate) has mushroomed from a small beginning to a major problem because the people in charge were not forthcoming and/or tried to cover things up.

If you have bad news, the sooner you 'fess up and take the hits, the sooner you can move past it. The public is more likely to be reassured and forgive your mistakes when you are forthcoming. Conversely, everyone dislikes a liar. Compare New York Yankee pitcher Andy Pettitte, who acknowledged taking performance-enhancing drugs and resumed his career, with teammate Roger Clemens, who to this day denies he used such drugs, and has seen his reputation permanently tarnished.

So take the moral high ground. Accept responsibility. Telling the truth allows you — and everyone else — to feel better about you, your college, and your profession.

But perhaps the best advice to guide your crisis response is to put people first. Behind closed doors, senior staff members must candidly evaluate the risk to the college and develop an appropriate response. But when you go public, always put human concerns before institutional ones.

In the case of the robbery, for example, or that incident early in my career when a young man took his life by drinking a poison-laced drink on closed-circuit television, all statements to the college community and news media began with genuine concern for the victims and their families. During such moments, you are the face of the university.

As institutions of higher learning, we always look for teachable moments, even in a crisis. When students in an art class at one college I worked for created an installation that included an American flag lying on the floor, some military veterans in the community heard about it and accused the students — in the media, of course — of trampling on the flag.

Intense discussions ensued among the college's senior administrators, some of whom wanted to capitulate to public sentiment and close the exhibit. That would have been disastrous, abridging academic freedom, trivializing the students' work, and serving as a tacit admission of wrongdoing. Calmer heads prevailed, and we chose to sponsor a public forum, moderated by our president, in which the veterans had a chance to talk with the students.

It went extremely well. Many of the students previously had no appreciation of why the flag, as a symbol, was held so dearly by the veterans, and the veterans had a chance to see that the students were thoughtful, and not intentionally disrespectful. The result was not only an end to the crisis, but a positive story in the local media.

Once a crisis breaks, your goal as a PR officer is to minimize damage to the institution. That is more easily done if you already have a good working relationship with local journalists. A good relationship may result in you getting a phone call from a reporter before a story breaks, rather than after. In the best cases, the story may be dropped altogether. But if it goes forward, it is better to have the college's position represented than not.

Perhaps my most challenging crisis involved a student at Hampshire College who used a Frisbee as the object of a case study involving everything from physics to marketing. For those unfamiliar with Hampshire, it has an innovative program in which, among other things, narrative evaluations are used in lieu of grades. The college operates something like a graduate school at the undergraduate level: Students assemble faculty committees to review their work, which may consist of course work, research, and other learning tools around a particular topic. The program works best for students who are disciplined and motivated, and Hampshire has produced some extraordinarily talented and successful graduates.

But the titles of some student projects can sound trite, and are ripe for satire. So it was with this student, who thought it was a good idea to trivialize his own work, telling a wire-service reporter that he was earning his degree in Frisbee. The story went everywhere, and made Hampshire the butt of jokes for some time (just last summer, 25 years later, I overheard a colleague repeating the story!).

I was new to the college and the field of public relations then, but I learned a valuable lesson: Don't ever assume that the public knows your institution; be proactive about educating people. Hampshire's pedagogical approach was poorly understood by reporters and local residents, many of whom had never set foot on the campus. When the national media swooped in, it was all too easy for the locals to confirm the negative stereotypes. Ever since, I have always made it paramount to get to know my local journalists and community leaders, and keep them informed about the institution I represent.

About those dead crows: Huge flocks had become a nuisance and a public health hazard in a city in which I was working. City officials tried everything to get rid of the birds, including setting off fireworks, which merely made the crows relocate from downtown to our campus. In midwinter, and without our knowledge, the Environmental Protection Agency decided to poison the crows, and black carcasses began littering our snow-covered campus. The college initially was accused of killing the birds, and we literally had to clean up the damage.

Sometimes, you just can't win.

Russell Powell is a public-relations officer at Elms College in Chicopee, Mass. He previously worked as director of public relations at Hampshire College and at Greenfield Community College, and as a consultant. He will be writing occasionally for On Message, our new column on career issues in academic public relations. If you would like to write for the column, send your ideas to careers@chronicle.com.