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AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904

The GW Hatchet

Serving the GW Community since 1904

The GW Hatchet

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Officials name senior vice president, chief of staff
By Fiona Riley, Assistant News Editor • March 26, 2024

Knapp to boost campus safety, security

University President Steven Knapp approved findings made by the presidential task force he formed to assess campus safety and security last fall.

The task force’s leadership group, which is GW’s primary incident response team, consists of seven high-ranking University officials. Now that the group has secured Knapp’s approval of their recommendations, the members will form a committee to implement them.

“There are a lot of moving parts and a lot of people involved,” said Tracy Schario, a spokesperson for the University. “This is ongoing. You could argue that it will never be finished, because safety and security is never finished.”

The task force’s three main goals are creating an online safety education program for the GW community, managing campus mental health effectively and modernizing the University Police Department’s equipment and facilities.

Efforts are already being made to promote and expand the use of AlertDC, a mobile and Internet alert system which informs students and faculty of hazardous weather, campus crime and safety issues.

Knapp formed a presidential task force to address campus safety and security in response to the deadly shootings at Virginia Tech last fall. The task force used Virginia Tech’s internal assessment of the tragedy to guide their evaluation of GW’s campus security.

Schario said, “You never know how things are going to roll out on your campus.”

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