Counselors Reach Out Across Virginia Tech and Other Campuses

By ELYSE ASHBURN and SARA LIPKA

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Students finishing the semester at Virginia Tech this spring have many places to turn for help with their grief. This week they could drop by the Thomas E. Cook Counseling Center from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., read tips on the university's Web site about coping with tragedy, and talk to counselors via an 800 number throughout the night.

Virginia Tech set up crisis counseling stations in the Squires Student Center and dispatched individual counselors, wearing purple armbands or "May I help?" stickers, to other high-traffic areas of the campus.

Many students whose classmates or professors were killed or injured in the shootings on April 16 returned to class on Monday, and certified counselors were there, too. They led discussion sessions, sat in on the classes, or waited outside, depending on what faculty members preferred.

During this week, counselors planned to go to the classes of all of the victims, to help students return to a normal schedule, said Chris Flynn, director of the Cook center. "The counselors have had a tremendous impact on how students have reacted," he said on Monday. "They have had a calming effect."

Virginia Tech has been able to post so many counselors around the campus by collaborating with local mental-health agencies and volunteers from other colleges. Immediately after the shootings, nearby chapters of the American Red Cross organized counselors in the region. Early this week, directors of the counseling centers at Lehigh University and West Virginia University were here with Mr. Flynn. Many former predoctoral interns in psychology at Virginia Tech had also shown up.

'Highly Credentialed People'

Coordinating all of those counselors was a daunting task. When Mr. Flynn interrupted a telephone interview with The Chronicle to take care of something urgent, Lehigh's counseling director, Ian Birky, stepped in. He explained how Virginia Tech's counselors were using volunteers, depending on their qualifications.

"There is an effort to make sure that highly credentialed people with a lot of experience are in more-critical areas, and less credentialed people can accompany them," Mr. Birky said. For example, third- and fourth-year students at the Edward Via Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine, on the Virginia Tech campus, were standing by at first-aid tents to look for physical symptoms of grief.

Ideally, all therapists who come to a grief-stricken campus should check in with the counseling center, present their credentials, wait for instructions, and work under the university's supervision, said Wayne D. Griffin, associate director of the counseling center at the University of Florida.

But that can hardly happen in the chaotic aftermath of a tragedy, he said, and so university officials cannot be sure who is reaching out to their students.

"In some cases," said Mr. Griffin, an expert on crisis counseling, "there's some negative convergence of people who come to help but perhaps are not as well prepared or willing to collaborate with the institution." Not all volunteers will have experience in grief counseling, or with young adults.

Virginia Tech's Mr. Flynn declined to comment on the presence of Brinkley, a specially trained golden retriever who had been brought from Atlanta by his owners, who work for a group called Hope Animal-Assisted Crisis Response. As for the many religious-ministry groups that have shown up on the campus, Mr. Flynn said: "I'm sure some people welcome that, and others, well, that may not be part of their faith tradition."

Waiting Lists

Making sure that students have different ways to get help is a good idea, said Jeffrey W. Pollard, director of the counseling center at George Mason University. Many students on that campus, in Fairfax, Va., with personal connections to those at Virginia Tech were also grieving.

Counselors at George Mason and at Virginia Commonwealth University, in Richmond, held meetings in their residence halls the day of the shootings. Later last week, they organized drop-in group sessions for students and posted counselors at tables in the dining halls or student centers. George Mason's tables were marked "Friends of Virginia Tech"; Virginia Commonwealth's said "Talk About It."

Mr. Pollard extended part-time staff members' hours and pulled in some social-work professors, but the waiting list for individual appointments, at 15 students, was the longest he could remember.

"We don't have enough bodies to take care of all of this," he said. "To be honest, we don't have enough staff to take care of the kind of demand we have without this kind of a tragedy."

Counselors at the University of Virginia saw a different response: They held two walk-in sessions last week, and not a single student showed up, said Russ Federman, director of the Harrison Bowne "Tersh" Smith Jr. Memorial Center for Counseling and Psychological Services.

Many students were probably nurturing each other, he said: "Because you're in a context where everyone is experiencing similar feelings, the sense of empathy and group support ... is readily accessible."

In the aftermath of a tragedy, said Mr. Federman, colleges' expectations of students' psychological needs may be too high. "Something happens, and the helping button gets pushed," he said. "I think often it's an overreaction."

But for students, seeing that support, even if they do not take advantage of it, can still help, he said.

Maggie Gartner, director of the student-counseling service at Texas A&M University at College Station, likens the visibility of mental-health services in the wake of a tragedy to Linus's famous blue blanket, in the Peanuts comic strip.

When things start to return to normal, Mr. Pollard said, "people are going to start feeling more isolated. There's going to be less natural group support." And at that point, he said, they are more likely to seek professional help.

Mr. Flynn, the counseling director at Virginia Tech, has the same expectation. He is working to provide students with contacts for counseling services over the summer. If they are in the Northern Virginia area, for example, they can go to George Mason. In Richmond they may be able to visit a Virginia Tech clinic.

But some effects of trauma emerge in the long term, he said. Virginia Tech plans to have more counselors than normal on the campus when students return this fall.