In the days following the recent devastating attacks at Virginia Tech, student grief soon turned to anger as many students and their families harshly criticized the university’s security procedures.  At the root of the complaint was the fact that students who were caught in Cheung-Hui Cho’s fire did not receive news of a previous on-campus shooting (that took place 2 hours before) until it was too late. As a result, other campuses are quickly re-assessing their own security needs and deciding how they can quickly notify their students of any danger ranging from extra man-power to sirens, to even text-messages.

In order to institute secure lockdown procedures, some universities are exploring the use of high technology. At the University of Minnesota nearly 40 percent of the buildings on campus have electronic doors and can be locked and secured from an on campus control center. Additionally, schools in North Carolina are looking into a high-tech security systems for their institutions of high learning.  State Attorney General Roy Cooper has considered installing a system complete with video cameras, card access door locks, and timed alarms to notify authorities when doors have been propped open for too long.  Meanwhile, other schools have requested that the local police step up enforcement and stay on alert for any threatening people who may try to enter school grounds.

If a threat has already entered a particular building, as was the case in Virginia Tech, securing student safety becomes much more difficult and efforts must be made to minimize casualties.  In either case, experts suggest that a premium must be placed on minimizing casualties by informing as many students of the danger as quickly as possible so that they will avoid the area in question.  While campuses like University of Iowa and Washington are looking at expanding the use of a campus PA system, several other campuses across the country are modernizing their warning systems to quickly catch the attention of their students. Several universities are talking to a communications companies in order to construct a campus wide text-message alert system.  Under this program, campus officials could get warnings sent out to thousands of students simultaneously, just at the push of a button, and have them steer clear of the area in question.

While even the most elaborate campus security system cannot offer 100 percent protection from an angry assailant, effective warning systems can help minimize the risk of another tragedy of the scale of the one that took place on Virginia Tech, and at other schools in the past.

Author: Kenneth C. Schwarz currently is the Director of Information Services at T3 Government Strategies, a state/ local government affairs firm.  He previously served as a staffer for the US House Committees on the Budget and Ways and Means.  Mr. Schwarz earned his bachelors degree from Indiana University and his law degree at Chapman University School of Law.

Kenneth Schwarz, JD
Director of Information Services,
T3 Government Strategies
621 King Street, Suite 300, Alexandria, VA  22314

Telephone (703) 299-8740
Fax  (703) 379-1958

kschwarz@t3strategy.com
www.t3strategy.com