Memorandum

Date:

June 18, 2014

Subject:

Crisis Memo Need for Crisis Communication & Management

To:
From:

Salem State University President

Lauren Bass

Adequate procedures should be in place regarding crisis communication and management

in order to maintain the good reputation of Salem State University (SSU). Having
effective procedures in place is essential to SSU for attracting prospective students and
obtaining continued support from SSU alumni.
Examples of Crisis
Salem State as a victim In September 2013, Salem State University had an incident
where a student was stabbed by an acquaintance, which was not a student at the
University. The stabbing took place onboard one of the shuttle buses that the university
utilizes to shuttle students around the campus and to/from the school parking lots within,
minutes of the university knowing that the event had occurred, the entire campus was
under lock down. As the scenario unfolded, Salem State Police communicated to
students and staff via email and automated phone messages, to keep the community
aware of the situation. SSU can greatly reduce the risk of such an incident by having
students swipe their SSU identification card (Clipper Card), upon boarding a shuttle bus.
This would at least eliminate non-students from having access to move easily about the
campus.
Salem State as a guilty party SSU has had a track-record of drinking by under-age
student on school premises. Although, this is a problem for a lot of Universities across
the United States, SSU needs to do a better job to eliminate, or at least reduce, this issue.
Underage drinking results in incidents that do not prove to improve the schools wellbeing and reputation. SSU can enforce the dormitory rules and regulations by utilizing
more resident assistants throughout the dormitories. Resident assistants, in turn, need to
be trained to have a stricter enforcement of the under-age drinking issue.
Crisis Communication and Public Relations
Similarities Crisis management is like public relations, because a crisis management
organization, such as the Red Cross, utilizes public relations strategies to get information
out to the public about how the organization handles a crisis. Also, a crisis management
plan is likely to include certain actions by public relations staff as part of the response to
an emergency situation.

Differences Although public relations and crisis management both have an impact on
the reputation of a product/organization, public relations impact on reputation results
from planned activities. Whereas, the effect on reputation by crisis management usually
results from how a crisis or emergency is handled, and although a strategy can be preplanned for emergency response, the actual implementation of the strategy is not planned
and is triggered by the emergency incident.