Thirty-two students and professors were dead and more than two dozen injured at Virginia Tech, victims of a student gunman with a history of disturbing behavior.

For Crisp, the April 16 massacre brought back painful memories of a mentally ill law student whose shooting rampage tormented UNC-Chapel Hill in 1995.

Crisp's first reaction: He had to get back to Chapel Hill.

"I knew every university worldwide was going to be affected by that," he says. "My second thought was, this was going to change everything. This was going to be on the scale of Columbine, Oklahoma City and 9/11."

It is still unclear exactly what those changes will be. But Crisp, 40, UNC-Chapel Hill's assistant vice chancellor for student affairs, has spent his summer in Blacksburg, Va., sorting out the difficult issues of how universities should balance privacy, campus safety and treatment of mentally ill students.

He was on loan to Virginia Tech from UNC-CH. His boss, Vice Chancellor Peggy Jablonski, had contacted her colleague Zenobia Hikes, vice president for student affairs at Virginia Tech, and offered Crisp's service on behalf of Atlantic Coast Conference schools.

Jablonski says she knew Crisp had the maturity and experience to lend a strong helping hand so that the staff there could take much-needed vacations. And that Crisp, whom she calls the "next Jay Leno," would help lighten the mood.

Hikes recently wrote to Jablonski, "He has been the gift that we didn't realize we needed."

Crisp won't take any credit. The heroes, he says, are the people at Virginia Tech.

"I have been overwhelmed by the strength and reaction of people here," he said during his final week in Blacksburg. "People are tired, people are emotionally drained, people are in pain. But people are shouldering the burden and doing the work. They're looking to the future in a way that makes you proud to be around them."

His work will likely help Virginia Tech move forward. He helped develop protocols for how to handle troubled students but without passing judgment on the actions of Virginia Tech regarding Seung-Hui Cho, the gunman. That is the task of the Virginia governor's commission, which is expected to present its findings this month.

Crisp went to Blacksburg with fresh eyes, and, Hikes says, consulted experts across the country for ideas on how universities can do better.

"It's hard to do that," Crisp says, "when you're in the middle of it and don't have the emotional distance."

He should know. Crisp's career has been a lesson in grace under pressure.

A case of his own

He began as an assistant dean for student affairs at UNC's law school just weeks after taking the bar exam. He was nervous about being an inexperienced administrator about the same age as the students.

A major test came less than three years later when Crisp was 27. A man with a rifle marched through downtown Chapel Hill in January 1995, killing two people. The shooter was Wendell Williamson, a UNC law student whom Crisp had tried to help. Williamson was found not guilty by reason of insanity and has been in a state mental hospital ever since.

Like Cho, Williamson had exhibited bizarre behavior, according to testimony in court, at one point standing up in class and announcing he was telepathic and claiming he had a videotape to prove it.

Crisp persuaded Williamson to get treatment, which helped for a while. Eventually, though, Williamson stopped medication and treatment after his psychiatrist retired. He later sued the university, claiming his treatment was not monitored appropriately. The jury sided with Williamson, but that verdict was overturned by an appeals court.

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