The Brandeis Ripple Effect
The headline in The Boston Globe online boldly told the story – “Crisis raises questions on Brandeis campus.” The recession and the depth of America’s financial is clobbering universities, which seemingly are unprepared for a crisis on every front.
Were it not for the famous and respected name of Brandeis, this story may be replicated at universities across the land:
The financial damage came fast, and the fallout has cut deep … the private liberal arts college watched its endowment plummet and its fund-raising drop off sharply, as many of the school’s most reliable and deep-pocketed donors suffered heavy losses in the Bernard Madoff investment scandal.
The combination delivered a heavy blow that culminated in [the] stunning announcement that Brandeis would close its renowned Rose Art Museum and sell off the 6,000-piece collection. More radical steps are on the table: eliminating staff and faculty positions, expanding enrollment to boost tuition revenue, and overhauling the entire undergraduate curriculum to cut costs and attract prospective applicants.
The scope and speed of the turmoil buffeting the Waltham campus have left many students and faculty members reeling, with many questioning the administration’s decisions to deal with the financial crisis.
That last paragraph caught my attention – “the scope and speed of the turmoil.” I don’t know anyone who has not been stunned by the depth of the current economic crisis, fed by massive corruption and greed on Wall Street. I’m not surprised – as someone who consults on strategic communications issues in the not-for-profit, academic and corporate fields – about Brandeis getting caught unprepared in the area of crisis communications. I predict we will hear of many such crises on campuses across America. No university is immune.
What exacerbates bad news, such as that from Brandeis, is that the media landscape has changed. We get our news online, for the most part, and news today spreads around the world in a nanosecond. The way to control a crisis is being prepared, in advance, not after the fact.
Crisis communications preparedness rather than crisis communications management. The former is what all universities should be focusing on today because it will help to protect a university’s reputation tomorrow when and if bad news strikes.
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Category: Crisis Communications, Featured, Strategic Communications
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We in the art community are in great pain right now. Haven’t felt this angry since Jesse Helms put the Kibosh on the NEA, Why is it always to negate the ARTS first?