Cracking Down on Campus Safety

It has been more than six months since Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho shot 32 people before killing himself on the university's campus in Blacksburg, Va. In light of the tragedy, schools across the country have initiated new precautions in an attempt to prevent a similar incident from occurring.

The changes universities and colleges have made, including implementing text-message warning systems, manifest problems and holes that existed in security systems before Virginia Tech. Although many students felt safe on their campuses and security procedures did exist, none had an efficient way to notify students of problems.

Jessica Tubbs, the assistant program director at Security on Campus Inc., a national nonprofit group that handles campus and security issues, says schools are extremely easy targets for “acts of terrorism” like the Virginia Tech shooting.

“Schools are easy targets for certain acts like what happened at Virginia Tech because they are wide-open, public spaces, usually highly, densely populated,” she says.

Tubbs says Virginia Tech helped schools realize how unsafe they were and that they needed to do more to prevent a similar tragedy.

“Virginia Tech just as a whole woke schools up to the idea that that sort of tragedy is capable of happening anywhere,” she says. “All schools need to be more vigilant and prepared.”

Erin Fairchild, a sophomore at Cedar Crest College, an all-girls school in Pennsylvania, says she never felt unsafe either before or after the Virginia Tech incident. She says this could probably be attributed to the lack of males on Cedar Crest's campus because most incidences she has heard of involve males. But her school has so many safety precautions in place, it's to the point of being overboard, she says.
Among the safety procedures her school had before Virginia Tech was a campus-wide call system in which security comes once a button is hit. She also says students needed special tags to get into dorms and that receptionists monitored entry. Furthermore, visitors in dorms could not be left alone and had to go with students everywhere, including the bathroom and classes.

“It’s very straightforward at orientation at the beginning of the semester that if there’s somebody waiting at the doorway and you’re walking by, do not let them in,” Fairchild says.

She thinks it is a bit overboard to require visitors to follow students everywhere, however.

“As long as you know that they’re signed into the building, you know that they’re in there … and you can find the person,” she says. “It’s a little embarrassing when you have to take them to the bathroom.”

Stephanie Bukowski, a sophomore at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania, also felt safe at her school before Virginia Tech because of precautions taken. She says that before Virginia Tech, Shippenburg had a call system, its campus was well-lit, security was always patrolling around, emails were sent out during emergencies and educational buildings made announcements.

Jason Foust, a sophomore at Penn State University, never felt unsafe, even with Penn State’s more than 40,000 students, because of its rural community and lack of an inner city, he says. The only precautions Penn State took before Virginia Tech were a call center, police patrolling and IDs to get into dorms.

“At the time, I never thought of there being a problem, I didn’t worry about it at all,” he says. But after Virginia Tech, he learned of a sniper shooting that had happened at Penn State years ago, and realized that the campus should have been doing more.

After Virginia Tech, all these schools adopted text message notification systems that students could sign up for.

Bukowski likes this change because they can sign up multiple phones to receive text message warnings about emergencies. “Before every class I always look at my phone to see if I have a missed call or anything.” Then, she says, she will know where to go if something happens.

“I think they’re doing as much as possible,” Bukowski says. “I don’t really know what else they could do. I mean, there’s so many students on campus, the best way they could contact everybody is through text messaging.”

Foust says he thinks the text messaging system is sufficient because students can be informed of problems easily.

“I feel this [Virginia Tech] was a situation that really couldn’t have been prevented by the university,” he says. “The only thing was they should have done was right after the first shooting, people should have been aware of it.”

The text messaging system has shown early success. At Delaware State University on Sept. 21, two students were shot and officials acted quickly to notify students of the shooting. At St. John’s University in Queens on Sept. 26, officials used a text-messaging system to notify students and faculty of a gunman on campus, preventing injuries and arresting the gunman quickly. In August at the University of Colorado, officials also used the text-messaging system to inform students of a stabbing and of what buildings to avoid.Bukowski does think that schools are lacking in noticing problems with students ahead of time.

“That kid had a lot of problems with him and the professors didn’t really notice,” she says. “I think the professors need to also look out for what students are writing and how they’re acting in class to prevent [similar incidents].”

Tubbs says that schools need to consider a multifaceted approach with manpower and technology when creating a security plan. She says schools have to consider what their specific safety concerns are, the size and location of the school, the relationship with local law enforcement, and how confined the campus is. She suggests patrol and posting of campus security, new technology such as the text message alert systems, and speaker sound systems throughout campuses.

Even with precautions and security systems similar to these, Tubbs says it is difficult to prevent shootings and acts of violence on campuses.

“As with any act of terrorism, which is what Virginia Tech was … it’s difficult to anticipate. But, an effective and quick response, thorough response, is, I think, the school’s best defense.” Also, students should be encouraged to report any suspicious behavior by students and faculty, and schools should take these concerns seriously.

Tubbs says crisis prevention should not be ignored because crises such as Virginia Tech’s can happen anywhere.

“[Virginia Tech] just certainly made our work a lot more relevant and it made a lot of schools open up to the idea that crisis prevention isn’t just something to think about in the aftermath or something like that,” she says. “It’s something that they need to be vigilant about, and [need to be] constantly updating their reaction plans.”