Featured Article -- May 2007

What can colleges and universities do to make campuses safer?

 The unprecedented school massacre at Virginia Tech has underscored one terrifying fact: Such attacks can never be completely prevented, and college campuses are especially vulnerable.

Unlike typical American elementary and high schools, college campuses are by design spread out. This openness may leave them to be more vulnerable to a violent incident or attack.

According to some college and university officials, maximum security is neither possible nor desirable in a setting built on openness, accessibility, and trust. Some strategies used in crisis situations by K-12 schools may not work on the majority of postsecondary campuses because they are simply not built to be locked down, and buildings are not often connected to a single public address system with a speaker in every room.

This list includes some safety strategies that postsecondary institutions may want to consider in light the public’s heightened awareness of the potential for violence on collegiate campuses:

1. Require first-year students to attend a security and campus safety seminar at orientation.
2. Post safety notices at areas on campuses most frequented by students and staff.
3. Encourage students, faculty and staff to report to designated authorities if they see suspicious or troubling activity. There is no substitute for personal vigilance when it comes to safety on any school campus.
4. Provide stand-alone emergency phones on campus that students can use to contact the police directly.
5. Train faculty how to spot signs of depression and how to access mental health services for students.
6. Look at requirements asking students to disclose if they have been convicted of a crime or disciplined at school or require them to submit an “applicant disclosure statement” about past misconduct. Consider conducting more thorough background checks on prospective students.
7. Prior to admission, require students to sign statements that they fully understand the consequences of exhibiting conduct that is unacceptable, troubling or mentally unstable, or criminal in nature.
8. Establish electronic communications systems that can readily disseminate important information to all faculty, campus police and security personnel, students and parents.
9. Consider installing intercom systems that can immediately broadcast a message to a single classroom or to the entire campus or to any combination in between.
10. Control access to dormitories by giving residents an electronic key that can also be used to track the comings and goings of individual students. Even with building access controls in place, sometimes doors are casually propped open to let in fresh air or to allow easy access. Continually advise residents against such practices.
11. Provide sufficient lighting in and around main entrances.
12. Consider the use of “smart” video cameras that rely on computer algorithms to detect suspicious activity such as someone climbing up a fence, walking down an alley late at night or lingering by a windowsill.
13. Provide adequate training to campus police and security personnel, including how to manage active shooter situations.

Violence often prevails because we cannot predict, fully control, or completely understand all the factors of human behavior and thought that foster such violence.

We will never be able to fully prevent every act of violence. In the long run, however, scarce resources may be better spent on mental health services than on high-tech security.

Rather than investing in defenses, the best use of our resources may be to direct them toward prevention.

The threat level in the airline sector is HIGH or Orange. See www.dhs.gov for details.

An online Suspicious Activity Report Form (SAR) will be available soon.