UVA Releases Heavily Redacted Reports on Campus Shooting

The University of Virginia has released two external reports on a November 2023 campus shooting that left three student athletes dead and two other students wounded. But the reports, which total almost 200 pages, are heavily redacted due to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, the federal law that prevents institutions from sharing certain information about their students, according to a message from President Jim Ryan to the campus community. The gunman, Christopher Jones, who pleaded guilty to the attack last November, was a UVA student and declined to waive his rights under FERPA, the message said.

As a result, the reports contain no information about the university’s previous dealings with Jones, who, at the time of the shooting, was already being investigated by the campus Threat Assessment Team for making concerning comments related to firearms.

The investigations were conducted by two law firms: Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP, which focused on the university’s threat assessment protocols, and Vinson & Elkins LLP, which analyzed the effectiveness of the police’s response to the shooting.

The Quinn Emanuel report noted that the university has “a foundation for a successful threat assessment program” but identified the “lack of defined scope of University authority” as a key weakness. The report offered 11 recommendations, including that high-risk conduct issues, like those addressed by the TAT, should not be handled by student conduct courts, and that the TAT should place increased priority on firearms-related cases.

The Vinson & Elkins report called the UVA campus police’s response to the shooting a “success” but offered eight recommendations for better navigating active threats. They included ensuring that active shooter alerts are sent out promptly and creating a plan to improve and hasten campuswide searches. Two of the recommendations were redacted entirely, and others were redacted in part.

In announcing the report, the university outlined several steps it has taken to improve campus safety, including expanding its existing TAT and updating training for dealing with weapons in residence halls.