The South Carolina Commission on Higher Education partnered with Francis Marion University to host the 2026 Dalton and Linda Floyd Campus Safety Conference this week, bringing together higher education leaders, campus safety professionals, law enforcement officials, legal experts, and student affairs staff from across the state. 
 
The two-day conference, held at the at the Carter Center for Health Sciences, provided a collaborative forum for institutions to strengthen campus preparedness and share strategies for addressing the evolving challenges facing college and university communities. Session topics included responding to and investigating bomb threats and swatting hoaxes, managing campus incidents, sexual assault prevention and response, autism awareness, workplace violence, and behavior intervention. 
 
Francis Marion University President Dr. Luther F. Carter opened the conference by welcoming attendees and recognizing the enduring commitment of Linda Floyd, who was in attendance, and her late husband, Dalton Floyd, whose shared vision and generosity helped establish the conference and continues to support its mission of advancing campus safety across South Carolina. 
 
Throughout the conference, speakers emphasized that effective campus safety extends beyond emergency response and requires proactive planning, collaboration, communication, and early intervention. 
 
CHE President and Executive Director Dr. Jeff Perez highlighted the importance of building trust during crisis situations, reminding attendees that “people want to know you care before they care what you know.”  

Attendees also received specialized training from Brian LeBlanc, supervisory special agent with the FBI Boston Threat Response Squad, who examined the growing impact of bomb threats and swatting hoaxes on educational institutions. In addition to the disruption and fear these incidents create, LeBlanc emphasized their significant financial burden.  

“In the last four years, this has cost taxpayers more than two billion dollars across the country. It has cost schools, police, and families hundreds of thousands of dollars and caused significant anxiety to students,” he added.  
 
Macey Webb, counsel to the South Carolina House of Representatives Education and Public Works Committee, provided an overview of recent legislative developments designed to strengthen campus safety, including new student safety training requirements that will be implemented across South Carolina colleges and universities beginning in July. 
 
Additional sessions explored managing campus incidents through coordinated leadership, challenging misconceptions surrounding sexual assault, increasing autism awareness, preventing workplace violence, and balancing student support with campus safety through effective behavior intervention practices. 
 
By bringing together professionals from multiple disciplines focused campus safety, the 2026 Dalton and Linda Floyd Campus Safety Conference reinforced a shared commitment to creating safer, more prepared campus communities across South Carolina.  
 
From the opening of the conference, Perez underscored a central theme that resonated throughout the event: prevention as the foundation of campus safety. 
 
“The best threat to a campus is the one that doesn’t happen. Either you anticipate it, interdict it, or you have the support on campus to make sure that a student or faculty member who may be thinking dark thoughts is engaged before it happens,” Perez said. 
 
That message echoed across discussions throughout the conference, reinforcing the shared commitment among higher education leaders and campus safety professionals to proactively identify risks, intervene early, and strengthen support systems that keep campuses safe.