In late summer 2019, the University of Exeter was conducting tabletop exercises around the prospect of a global pandemic. As the Assistant Director of Communications at the U.K. university, Rob Mitchell knew all too well the value of such exercises in helping to ensure he and his team are prepared for potential life-and-death situations. But looking back now, he admits he thought to himself, “This has been a useful exercise, but luckily we’ll never have to deal with this.” 

We all know how that story ended. Just seven months later, Mitchell, along with education communicators around the world, was leading a crisis communications plan on a scale that had no comparison. From the urgent shutdown of the university in March 2020 to the months that followed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Mitchell says there was a steady “drumbeat” of communication, all aimed at conveying transparency, safety, facts, and empathy. 

Then, just one year later in March 2021, he was hit with a bomb that would, once again, call for crisis communication in an unprecedented situation. The potential of metaphorical “bombs” dropping at any moment on the routine happenings of a college campus is the very reason for crisis manuals and tabletop exercises. 

The one at the University of Exeter, however, was literal. At 9:30 on a Friday morning, workers on the edge of campus discovered an undetonated World War II bomb. By 10 a.m. the area had been cordoned off and the university’s leadership team, including Mitchell, had assembled. Urgent, steady, and clear communications would be an essential component of safely evacuating students and staff. 

That process was further complicated in some ways by the pandemic. Students needed to be relocated following distancing protocols. Hotels in the city were at a premium; many were still closed due to the pandemic and others were reserved for essential workers. But in other ways, the process was simpler because there were far fewer students and staff on campus.

“We were relocating hundreds as opposed to tens of thousands,” says Mitchell. 

That Sunday, he and his team watched the controlled detonation of the bomb via live feed.

“Because it was planned and controlled, we thought we would see puffs of smoke,” recalls Mitchell. “[But] it was an absolutely enormous explosion! That graphically brought home what responsibility we were holding. If we had made a misstep—not just the communications team, but the entire university leadership group—the consequences could have been catastrophic.”

It’s been four years since the global pandemic tested and proved the talent, skill, and dedication of communications professionals at education institutions the world over. But that doesn’t mean any of them can rest on their laurels. In recent years, the figurative “bombs” have continued to drop as pressure—from constituencies both within and outside the campus confines—has mounted for institutions to take stands and make statements about political and societal issues. Chief communications officers and their teams are finding that the very act of making a statement, or not making a statement, can become the crisis. Many are going back to their crisis playbooks and adding guidelines that facilitate the decision-making process for responding to societal issues. And that process, they say, works best when it’s grounded in an educational institution’s mission.