The Commitment to End On-Campus Violence

As a school leader, you are uniquely positioned to help combat on-campus violence. We know that helpful political changes are too slow to be implemented, and controversy surrounding gun control is blocking progress. You have the ability to encourage a school-wide culture of ownership. This reduces violent crimes, vaping, bullying, and other detrimental behaviors on campuses.

You can also implement better security and reporting systems, so students feel safe reporting potential threats to others and themselves before it’s too late.

How Anonymous Tipping Platforms Make a Difference

Anonymous tipping platforms are one of the cornerstones of better campus security and a culture of positive mental health. Students are often more aware of potential threats, suspicious activity and people, and incidents of violence than teachers or administrators, but unfortunately, they’re often hesitant to make reports. This could be for fear of retribution, distrust of authority to take action, and the social repercussions of “snitching”.

Anonymity is a powerful reporting ability that will help reduce the fear of social repercussions and encourage students to report concerning behavior that they see, hear, or feel, as they won’t be associated with making the report. This will make it easier for law enforcement, security, and administrators to tap into student life and ensure a healthy learning environment.

Most school shooters tell someone about their plans. In fact, it is reported that in nearly 84% of US school shootings, one person knew something before it happened, while in 68% of shootings, at least two people had relevant information beforehand. Reporting that intent can and will make a massive difference. Furthermore, anonymous reporting helps alleviate the fear of retaliation for those who come forward. 

Students, teachers, staff, school resource officers, and parents should be provided with training and guidance on recognizing alarming behaviors. They should be encouraged to report anything they see, or feel, knowing that their report will be taken seriously and addressed immediately.

What Makes a Good Anonymous Tipping Platform

Anonymous tip reporting platforms are a critical part of every campus security strategy. The right platform provides an avenue for students, parents, and other members of the community to share information about potentially harmful or dangerous situations they observe at school, as well as share information about their personal suicidal thoughts or desired self-harming behavior.

The best anonymous tipping platforms have a robust feature set that allows users to quickly make reports while also providing an easy way for school administrators to access and act on those reports.

When integrating a new system into your school district, it’s crucial to understand your platform vendor’s data anonymity policy for the release of protected data. You want to choose an anonymous tip reporting platform that has a 48- or 72-hour subpoena process: this gives school leaders the ability to determine what they need specifically and ask their tip reporting vendor to supply the requested data through a timely subpoena before the data is permanently deleted.

It is critical that a plan for the sincere and persistent adoption of the platform is established so that awareness is ubiquitous and sustainable. Persistent adoption is essential to an ownership culture that conveys to everyone that your campus is safer because everyone on campus understands what to do when they see that something is wrong. 

The primary reason these platforms continuously fail is because of a lack of adoption. However, a close second is that districts become overwhelmed with incoming tips. This causes districts to miss or ignore incoming tips which adds to student and staff distress, as well as increased liability. Other than adding headcount to the budget, the only way to combat this is by leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI).  

An anonymous tipping platform must have the capability of leveraging AI to automatically categorize threat levels. Without this fundamental capability, all tips are “created equal,” and districts will be relegated to treating every tip with urgency; this isn’t sustainable and leads to failure. AI can place incoming tips into categories so that district personnel can know the urgency of the tip.

Currently, there is only one anonymous tipping platform on the market that combines every necessary feature into one convenient platform: TipNow Pro.

TipNow Pro

The TipNow Pro from ICUTechnologies is the premier anonymous tip reporting platform on the market today. It increases your field of vision and provides more evidence for law enforcement to work with. TipNow helps law enforcement turn what’s typically a reactionary process into a proactive and preventative situation in which those who are desperate and violent can get help without causing harm to schools.

It’s up to all of us to create safer schools, and ICU Technologies is proud to help ensure the best possible security for California campuses.

The TipNow Pro platform is the premier anonymous tip-reporting platform that can dramatically help prevent and reduce on-campus violence, self-harming behavior, as well as suicides, by giving students an easy way to speak up when they see or feel something.

There is no better time than now to take action and make your campus a safer place—and one with a culture that promotes positive mental health.