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Shootings heighten college safety concerns

After NIU tragedy, schools continue efforts to step up security

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Shootings heighten college safety concerns

DeKALB, Ill.—Even before the deadly Valentine's Day shooting at an Illinois university, colleges and universities nationwide were beefing up their security and emergency response procedures, risk managers and security consultants say.

But as higher education institutions and consultants investigate and debate the effectiveness and appropriateness of measures such as high tech emergency response systems and threat assessment teams, they acknowledge that they can't make campuses risk-free.

Short of turning open campuses into exorbitantly expensive, high-security fortresses, "you're only going to reduce the risk so much," said Hank Chase, a senior vp with Frederick, Md.-based Integrity Consulting.

"It is the most complex issue confronting universities," which amount to towns of 5,000 to 50,000 residents trying to enforce security, said Rick Vohden, a Morristown, N.J.-based senior risk consultant in the education practice at Marsh Risk Consulting, a unit of Marsh Inc.

One security consultant, however, criticized schools for not doing more to inform students about how to recognize and respond to threats.

The latest deadly campus shooting occurred Feb. 14 at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Ill., about 60 miles west of Chicago. A heavily armed 27-year-old former student, Steven Kazmierczak, entered an auditorium and began firing, killing five and injuring 18 before committing suicide.

The tragedy occurred nearly 10 months after 32 students and instructors were killed and nearly two dozen more were injured at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va., during the nation's worst campus shooting.

NIU representatives did not respond to questions about the school's security, but consultants say that universities and colleges nationwide have reassessed their security and emergency response plans since the Virginia Tech shooting.

For example, a small survey of schools in early February showed that 17 of 20 respondents planned to add a total of 20.5 emergency management positions, with those personnel also being in charge of identifying threats, said Ellen M. Shew Holland, director of risk management at the University of Denver and current president of the University Risk Management & Insurance Assn.

At the relatively small Wheaton College, which has about 100 buildings at its Wheaton, Ill., campus, the school installed a reverse 911 system before the Virginia Tech shooting, said Vincent Morris, director of risk management and president-elect of the Bloomington, Ind.-based URMIA.

And since last fall, the college has nearly completed installing a $250,000 emergency communications system, which includes an electronic message board in every classroom and office as well as a wireless internal speaker system. The school also is investigating an external speaker system, he said.

In Ohio, Kent State University is participating in a three-month pilot program of a new Internet-based technology designed to give school officials and commanders of emergency response teams archived satellite images of an emergency scene, building blueprints and real-time information on where emergency responders are deployed.

A campus drill last September showed that commanders are not always clear on responders' location even when in radio contact, said Dean Tondiglia, assistant chief of police and associate dean of public safety at Kent State.

The pilot program with Terra Image USA L.L.C. of Santa Barbara, Calif., is scheduled to begin in late March, Mr. Tondiglia said.

Preventing threats, though, is more challenging than responding to them.

Mr. Morris of Wheaton College, for example, is examining installing special locks and shatterproof glass on classroom doors. While the locks have to be tough enough to stop intruders, they also have to be easy to operate to comply with fire codes and disability laws, he noted.

Security consultants generally consider locking classroom doors helpful but emphasize that it is not a panacea.

But Marsh's Mr. Vohden noted that locked classrooms would not protect students in open courtyards.

While recognizing shortcomings of the measure--including the possibility that an assailant could enter a classroom before the door is locked--many consultants characterized it as a best practice that could save lives.

"Protecting some is better than protecting none," Integrity's Mr. Chase said. "You can't protect everybody, but you can do what you can."

The flaw in many schools' approach to security is that "they don't look at the issue holistically" by combining human and technological security and emergency response resources with aggressive threat assessment measures, said Gregory Boles, the Irvine, Calif.-based director of threat management and security services for Aon Consulting, a unit of Aon Corp.

A valuable lesson from the Virginia Tech shooting is that faculty and staff have to be trained to recognize and report aberrant behavior by peers and students; another is that a threat assessment team of school officials, including the risk manager and a mental health services representative, must maintain contact with the individual and his or her family to gauge and minimize the threat to the school, Mr. Boles and Kent State's Mr. Tondiglia said.

This kind of intervention would not necessarily violate the individual's legal privacy rights even if information about that individual was obtained from mental health services and shared among some school officials responsible for safeguarding the facility, the experts said.

At the same time, campus security has to be alerted to watch for potential threats among those who have been barred from campus but may engage in "boundary probing" before mounting their assault, Mr. Boles said.

Schools also should be doing more to inform students about the risks they face, said Gary Salmans, a Troy, Mich.-based executive vp-risk management services for Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.

"We need to make everyone responsible for themselves and not count on security guards and all the hardware" to keep them safe, he said.

Even after the Virginia Tech shootings, many school administrators still think a deadly attack "couldn't happen here," he said.

URMIA's Ms. Shew Holland said many institutions have made great efforts to implement policies and procedures based on lessons learned from past school shootings.

But, she added, "every incident is unique" in some aspect. As a result, "we'll always learn something new" after each incident.