I would like, this week, to reflect on how to respond to campus crisis. Responding to campus crisis is a new topic for me. After reading the list of crises in the book from tragic deaths of students to terrorism attacks, I felt overwhelmed.

How do we deal with such a scary issue as administrators? Imagine all these crises occur in one day? “It requires special skills in handling this immediacy of the issues.” (p 603) Dealing with crisis takes on a different meaning according to the discipline. Benjin and Morin define crisis as “a flexible process for a college or university to assume when responding to a crisis.” Though institutions have plans, policies and procedures, there are times that they are helpless facing certain unpredicted situations.

Les us be real here. How much prepared are schools? How well prepared are the staff? Are the staff with the required skills always present when certain circumstances occur? I remember how I started working with refugees, transitioning from social services to refugee resettlement with no trainings or knowledge in the subject. I also remember how I barely survived resettling 100 refugees with the Kosovo war almost singlehandedly. Everyone in the department was either on vacation or sick or retired. The war happened in their absence. I was alone in the department. I had to face all the crises almost alone and making significant decisions solely based on common sense. I must admit that without God’s help I would have lost my sanity.

We must be prepared as administrators. That is a fact. We need to develop plans, practice in preparation, and establish policies and procedures. But we must be open to any eventuality that the inevitable could occur at any time and we can never be prepared enough to face it. How prepared was the country for the 09/11/01 tragedy despite our security systems? We must realize and accept that we can only be prepared in Jesus. He foresees all the crises and can make provisions for us. In the mist of the storms, the Bible reports that He simply says: “Be quiet” to the storms and they obeyed Him. The Bible says that He speaks and things happen. He orders, they occur. As administrators, we need to learn, besides our package plan for crisis, to completely rely on Jesus Christ, our only true crisis preventer and solver.