TIPS Enhances Campus Safety for Rappahannock
Online, October 4, 2012 (Newswire.com) - Rappahannock Community College has launched a new online incident reporting platform called TIPS (Threat Assessment, Incident Management and Prevention Services) from Awareity, equipping students, faculty, staff and others on campus to confidentially report concerning behaviors or potentially harmful incidents.
An award-winning suite of web-based tools, TIPS empowers individuals to anonymously report suspicious activities involving bullying, threats to harm, verbal abuse/harassment, physical assault, weapons, harassment, suicide risks, stalking, hazing, alcohol/drug possession, theft/robbery, vandalism, fraud, academic cheating or other.
"TIPS empowers anyone on campus and within the community to come forward and anonymously share information regarding concerning behaviors with us," said VP for Administration, Kim McManus. "Now we can make sure this information is communicated to the appropriate personnel and investigated immediately for a proactive response."
If someone has information about incidents that adversely affect campus climate or warrant concern for the safety of students, faculty or staff, they can access TIPS from RCC's website, select their campus location and anonymously report the information. Once an incident is reported in TIPS, the information is immediately routed to the College's Threat Assessment Team so members can coordinate a response and ensure all actions taken are documented to meet state and federal requirements. More than just an incident reporting form, TIPS provides threat assessment team members with a suite of tools for investigation, coordination, communication, analysis, ongoing tracking, Clery Act reporting and more.
Utilizing an existing Virginia State Contract, TIPS also provides an Awareness & Accountability Vault that allows all appropriate campus personnel to access guidance, policies, situational awareness and best practices to ensure responses are meeting safety, legal, regulatory and moral obligations. The Awareness Vault helps colleges and universities improve enterprise wide risk management by eliminating manual efforts like student handbooks, policy manuals, spreadsheets, etc. TIPS is much more effective in sharing role-based training and procedures and can help cut costs across multiple departments for training, travel and documentation.
"The Awareity MOAT/TIPS platform was the best, and certainly affordable solution, we found to warn of and track threats. The tools make the Threat Assessment Team more efficient and effective. That translates into keeping our students and staff safer and our making risk, incident, and policy management and training easy and thorough," said McManus.
The TIPS web link is located at http://www.rappahannock.edu/forms/report-a-threat/.
For more information about Awareity, visit www.awareity.com or www.tipsprevent.com.
Contact:
Katie Weaver
402.730.0077
info@awareity.com
www.tipsprevent.com
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