A pair of protesters dance with a bubble machine during a rave/rally Thursday outside Old Main about student safety on the campus of the University of Arizona. About 40 students and alumni danced to a DJ while demanding changes in the school’s policies and administration.

 Kelly Presnell photos, Arizona Daily Star

Major leadership changes at the University of Arizona offer a ray of reassurance to the campus community after a school year spent grappling with safety concerns following a deadly shooting, a faculty leader and others say.

On Monday, UA President Robert C. Robbins announced that Liesl Folks, the provost, will step down and that Paula Balafas is out immediately as chief of the UA Police Department. The university is launching a national search for their permanent replacements.

The resignations come after months of criticism directed at the UA administration for its handling of threats lodged by a former student against hydrology professor Tom Meixner. The ex-student, Murad Dervish, is charged with first-degree murder in Meixner’s shooting death on campus in October.

Monday’s resignation announcements were hard-fought and expected, said Katharine Zeiders, a UA faculty senator and associate professor of family and consumer sciences.

“This was an organized move. We had many staff, students and faculty behind the scenes advocating and working on this,” Zeiders told the Arizona Daily Star on Wednesday.

“We’ve been organizing and advocating since 2020, and we’ve been focused on worker protection and fair wages,” said Zeiders, who is also an organizing member of the United Campus Workers of Arizona.

“But then, after Tom’s death, we felt like enough was enough and we started organizing around accountability of administrators.”

‘Last resort’

After Meixner’s death, news reports and later two separate investigations, one compiled by faculty and one by outside consulting firm PAX, LLC, publicly revealed that Dervish had sent threatening communications to Meixner and numerous others in the hydrology department for close to a year.

Dervish was expelled and barred from campus in February 2022 but that did not stop his communication with Meixner and others, all of whom made numerous attempts to get help from various units on campus, including through the dean of students, Office of General Counsel and the UA Police Department.

But, according to the PAX report, because the UA was not running “an effective Threat Assessment Management Team,” it placed “an undue burden on administrative functions,” and led to a “decentralized and fractured approach” to campus safety.

The report also cited UAPD’s multiple “missed opportunities” to “engage, disrupt or arrest” Dervish, who had an extensive violent criminal history, prior to Meixner’s death.

It said the police department lacked effective communication with Pima County law enforcement in illustrating a more “complete picture of the seriousness of the threat and provided more substantial reasons for arrest” of Dervish.

The Pima County Attorney’s Office had declined to charge Dervish with misdemeanor threats and intimidation earlier in 2022 based on evidence in a report UAPD submitted about some of his behavior.

Once the PAX report was made available to the public in March, Robbins made multiple statements acknowledging that university leaders made mistakes and vowing to make meaningful change and rebuild trust with students, faculty and staff.

However, the same day in March, the UA Faculty Senate passed a non-binding vote of no confidence in Robbins and his administration’s ability to investigate and manage campus safety. At that time, senators told the Star they hoped Robbins would interpret the votes as “a wake-up-call,” not a call for his resignation.

“Organizing around the removal of administrators was our last resort,” said Zeiders, who added that she and other faculty members felt unheard by administrators in the aftermath of the Oct. 5 slaying.

But over the past month, Robbins has met with numerous faculty members and students to address campus safety reform, and Zeiders said the administrative changes announced Monday give the impression he is taking these conversations seriously.

‘Part of a larger change’?

“We hope this is part of a larger change,” Zeiders said, emphasizing higher wages, worker treatment and safety. “We want to keep leaders accountable. This is our university, which we love. We want to see these systemic changes at our university.”

For Kathy Varin, who is the senior business manager in the hydrology department, the resignation of the police chief brings her some comfort as she prepares to return to work on campus next fall.

“I’m glad she’s gone. She should have been gone the next day,” Varin told the Star. “Somebody was not passing these threats up to the police chief. The police chief should have known about that guy.”

Varin was just around the corner the day of the shooting when she heard gunshots and rushed to Meixner’s side until police arrived. “As soon as I heard gunshots, I knew it was (Dervish),” Varin told the Star. “I knew he had been making threats, I just didn’t know the extent.”

Varin, who’s worked for the UA for 20 years, said the hydrology department had even considered installing a panic button in the building in case Dervish came. But it was expensive and the department would have to pay for it, so it never materialized. “We were sitting ducks. I kept thinking, ‘What am I going to do if he comes into the office? How am I going to survive?’ “

But when Varin returns to campus next fall, there will be panic buttons in numerous buildings on campus in addition to required background checks for all graduate students.

UA is carrying out these and other changes including installing more locks and keyless entries, launching a mobile crisis team, setting up a new safety website and streamlining oversight of offices that deal with safety issues.

These are steps in the right direction in the eyes of Varin, who has already seen the worst case scenario of ineffective campus safety protocols.

“I’d like to see more police presence on campus. Maybe there’s other students thinking of doing this sort of thing. They need a deterrent,” Varin said. “If you can keep a Murad Dervish out of your department, believe me, you want to.”

At the same time, some students say they’re fearful of the kind of climate an increased police presence could create.

Nousha Aldhefery, a junior and student activist, said she doesn’t want to see any more police officers get hired to serve UAPD now that Balafas is out.

Maryan Hassan uses a megaphone to read aloud from a few of the 50 or so comments left in a “Burn Box” about student safety and the administration during a rally Thursday at the University of Arizona.

“We’ve never felt safe around police, especially after the death of Professor Meixner,” she said at a rally in front of Old Main Thursday where dozens of students called for the additional resignation of Dean of Students Kendal Washington White.

In a petition calling for White to resign, activists claim she “is unwilling to be part of a process of rebuilding trust with those she is charged to serve, and that to the contrary she contributes to an ongoing culture of fear and retaliation.” White and other UA officials have not responded to the Star’s requests for comment on the petition.

“Instead of hiring more police, we’d like the administration to work with us to see what would make us feel safe,” Aldhefery said.

As for Folks’ stepping down as provost or chief academic officer to establish a UA semiconducting manufacturing center, Aldhefery said:

“It’s good,” but “it’s not a solution. … If we settle for this, they’ll make us settle for everything else.”

‘Rebuilding trust’

Steve Patterson, who is now heading the Threat Assessment and Management Team and started his job as chief interim safety officer on Monday, would not comment to the Star about Balafas’ resignation.

But, he did say that striking a balance between safety and trust is one of his top priorities in launching the new Office of Public Safety.

He said he’ll be working with the newly established Campus Safety Advisory Commission to discuss questions like, “How do we engage with the campus community and make sure people feel comfortable reporting to the university” or UAPD.

He added that campus safety has a broad scope. “It’s not just for making our campus safe against violence,” Patterson said. For example, “it’s about making sure we’re fire-safe and have enough defibrillators in appropriate locations.”

Patterson will also have a new police chief and provost to work with to implement that plan, but at a news conference Friday, Robbins said it could be months before the UA permanently fills either of those roles.

“Organizational change is sometimes a good thing to rebuild trust,” said Robbins, who acknowledged that “many many mistakes were made” during the last school year and that the new provost and police chief will need a “safety-first” mindset.

“There are many opportunities for improvement for making our campus safer,” he said, “but there’s a lot of work to do and no one person can do that.”

University of Arizona President Robert C. Robbins gave a campus safety update on March 27, following the release of a report prepared by the independent PAX Group. Video by Pascal Albright, Arizona Daily Star

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Kathryn Palmer covers higher education for the Arizona Daily Star. Contact her via e-mail at kpalmer@tucson.com or her new phone number, 520-496-9010.