The Secure Community Network Issues 10 Key Steps Campuses Must Adopt for the Safety and Security of Jewish Students, Faculty, & Staff

The Secure Community Network (SCN), the official safety and security organization for the Jewish community in North America, today released 10 key steps for college campus administrators and leadership to adopt to protect Jewish students and staff. These recommendations were informed by a roundtable discussion co-hosted by SCN and the Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA) this week to examine the events, threats, and security concerns Jewish students faced during the protests and encampments on U.S. college campuses in the spring of 2024 and to identify best-practice strategies for when school resumes in the fall.

The roundtable was convened as part of SCN’s mission to prepare and protect the Jewish community, to identify what went wrong on college campuses across the country, and to determine how campus administrators, law enforcement, and the broader community can better ensure the safety of Jewish students going into the fall semester.

Roundtable participants included representatives from law enforcement entities such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Major County Sheriffs of America (MCSA), the National District Attorneys Association (NDAA), the National Fusion Center Association (NFCA), the Association of State Criminal Investigative Agencies (ASCIA), the National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA), and the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE); Jewish security professionals; and campus law enforcement representatives from 92 colleges and universities across 24 states.

After protests and encampments erupted following the 07 October Hamas terrorist attacks, SCN tracked 674 campus threat incident and suspicious activity reports targeting the Jewish community from 07 October through July 2024. These include protesters shouting, “Nazi liberation,” a group of Jewish students being locked inside their college library for their own security during an ongoing Palestinian protest, and a student threatening to “shoot up” a Jewish living center on their campus.

10 Key Security Steps for Jewish Student Safety on College Campuses:

1. Anticipate that pro-Hamas/anti-Israeli/pro-Palestinian protests are likely to occur on campuses this semester.
2. Recognize that Jewish students will be intimidated by the presence of pro-Hamas, anti-Israeli, or anti-Zionist protesters and their inflammatory language.
3. Have a plan in place to ensure the safety and security of Jewish students on campus, such as prohibiting building takeovers, encampments, campus activities that risk disrupting student movements and safety, and masking that makes it harder to identify perpetrators.
4. Publicly communicate a protest and security policy prior to the beginning of the semester for all to understand and re-evaluate any existing policies that may pose threats to Jewish student safety, such as an accepted call for the genocide of Jews.
5. Have emergency protocols in place to request law enforcement assistance to mitigate violent actions on campus.
6. Quickly discern when protests move beyond First Amendment-protected activities, where such protections are appropriate, into threatening, violent behavior. 
7. Understand the organic campus security capacity to manage protests that turn violent and quickly communicate the exigent nature of the threat to local and state authorities. 
8. Recognize that administrative leadership is essential to ensuring protests remain within First Amendment-protected activities.
9. Enforce all policies and procedures with equal consideration and severity in response to protest or activity of any persuasion, including prosecution of perpetrators when called for.
10. Recognize how statements and behaviors by administrators and leadership in the wake of incidents, such as offering to pay bail for arrested protesters or failing to investigate reported hate crimes, deteriorate Jewish students’ sense of safety and security and empower hateful or violent protesters to continue acting unlawfully.

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