The Elephant in the Ivory Tower: Rampages in Higher Education and the Case for Institutional Liability

This article considers the phenomenon of student rampage shootings in higher education, recounting seven rampages in college and professional schools since 1992. It supposes that there is a duty inherent in the academic enterprise to safeguard the classrooms, libraries, and other common spaces in which learning occurs. It suggests that an academic institution’s failure to reduce predictable violence should create liability to the victims and a duty to mitigate their suffering. The article examines tort cases since 1980 involving institutional liability for student violence, including the only case addressing institutional liability to the victim of a rampage to have reached decision. It argues for developing an expanded model of institutional responsibility that takes into account the unique characteristics of academic life and recognizes the special nature of academic relationships. The author was on the founding faculty of the Appalachian School of Law in 1997, served as its first dean of students in 1999-2000, and was at the school on the day of the rampage shooting in January 2002, in which the Dean, a professor, and four women students were killed or wounded.