Because no two campus crises are alike, presidents need crisis plans for all types of events and, when there is trouble, “we should do more than just patch things up,” said Presidents Institute panelist Joan Hinde Stewart, president of Hamilton College (NY).

In a session on “Preparing for and Reacting to Crises,” Stewart and presidents David Pollick of Birmingham-Southern College (AL) and Trudie Kibbe Reed of Bethune-Cookman University (FL) discussed how presidents should prepare for and react to crises precipitated by circumstances as varied as reprehensible student actions, controversial speakers, and community problems.

Each president offered a case study from his or her own campus experiences, including a controversial speaker at Hamilton, a racially-sensitive campus-community situation at Bethune-Cookman, and a church-burning incident that implicated students at Birmingham-Southern. All three presidents agreed on several crisis-management tactics: