Action Plan Overview
Message from the President
On October 5, 2022, we lost a beloved member of our University of Arizona community, Dr. Thomas Meixner, Professor and Department Head of the Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences.
Since then, our senior leadership team has been engaged in meaningful and transparent dialogue about what we must do for our students, faculty, and staff. The University engaged with the PAX Group, LLC, nationally recognized security experts, to conduct an independent, comprehensive review of how the University handled threats in advance of the murder of Professor Meixner.
This report helped inform us about what additional or different steps could have been taken to better protect our faculty, staff, students, and visitors and how we can improve our response, policies, and procedures involving campus safety and security in the future.
My promise to our students, faculty, staff, parents, and visitors to campus:
- We will implement the 33 recommendations included in the PAX Report, and track our progress on this website.
- We continue to review our campus safety response, particularly as it relates to Professor Meixner;
- We will vigorously pursue necessary and prudent avenues to enhance community safety, relying on experts to advise us;
- We will remain steadfast in our commitment to all of you.
I am grateful to everyone who participated in this review process, including those who shared thoughts on campus safety and security and the members of the General Faculty Committee on University Safety for All. Thank you to our faculty, staff, students, and community members who have stepped up to offer your support, your cooperation, your collaboration, and your compassion during this difficult time. We are a resilient community, and we will move forward, together.
Tom Meixner will never be forgotten. The best way to honor his legacy is to make changes, and to deepen our engagement with our work and with one another.
Sincerely,
Robert C. Robbins, President, University of Arizona
What is the PAX Report?
The PAX Group Report identified opportunities to improve systemic issues across three main themes: Understanding and managing threats; Providing a consistent, empathetic, and compassionate response; and Decentralization and breakdown of communications.
The report's 33 recommendations fall across four Action Areas for Improvement within the University community.
Each action area lists the recommendations and status updates toward implementation.
The recommendations are not a checklist for completion, but rather a guide to continue to focus on safety.
Action Areas for Improvement
Threat Assessment & Management Team
Goal: Formalize the Threat Assessment and Management Team (TAMT) to serve as an active, centralized resource for the University.
Crisis Response
Goal: Ensure consistent, robust, and comprehensive safety and security training and procedures for the entire campus community.
Crisis Response Recommendations
University of Arizona Police Department
Goal: Continue and improve training, engagement, and proactive coordination with partners across law enforcement agencies in order to enact effective threat management and investigations.
Communications
Goal: Create and enact coordinated, centralized, streamlined crisis communications plans, providing the campus community with consistent & unified messaging.