The Chronicle of Higher Education
04-18-07
College Risk Managers Weigh the Benefits of Emergency Notification, Other
Security Measures
By SARA LIPKA
As Virginia Tech officials released more details on Tuesday about the fatal
shootings there, experts on risk management and crisis planning continued to
consider what colleges might do to try to prevent this kind of tragedy.
"I just sit here thinking what would we have done on our campus, what could we
have done differently," said Rebecca L. Adair, risk manager at Iowa State
University. "Probably everyone in my chair across the country is doing the same
thing."
Ms. Adair and others said that e-mail messages among colleagues at various
institutions this week have focused on crisis communication, emergency
notification, and lockdown procedures. The main questions people are asking are
when to notify students and employees of a critical incident, how to do so, what
to say, and how to quickly secure a campus perimeter, as well as dozens or
hundreds of buildings.
Over the past few decades, violence, natural disasters, and other crises on
college campuses have spurred new security measures, like swipe cards for
building entrances, emergency telephone and lighting systems, and evacuation
procedures. In response to the Virginia Tech tragedy, some experts wondered
whether, for example, campuswide public-address systems, which few
institutions now have, might become more common.
Installing speakers outdoors, as well as in all campus buildings, would be "a
massive undertaking," said Ms. Adair. "But it could very well be where we need
to head." Another measure she proposed was a notification system by cellphone
text message, which a Virginia Tech spokesman said on Monday the university
had been developing in recent months. (See related article.)
Ms. Adair and other risk managers interviewed for this article were hesitant to
criticize Virginia Tech officials for their actions on Monday.
They suggested that the initial dormitory shootings there could have been
interpreted as an isolated domestic dispute, as officials there said they saw it. In
that situation, a campuswide warning would not necessarily have been
warranted.
"It's a reasonable conclusion to draw that it's not an ongoing threat," said Ann H.
Franke, a private consultant to colleges on risk management. There are many
precedents of isolated shootings, she said. "In a very large institution, it would be
unlikely that a domestic dispute would cause a complete closure of the campus. I
haven't seen that happen in the past."
At the University of Washington this month, campus police responded to reports
of gunshots in an academic building. They entered the building not knowing
whether the assailant was still at large, said Vicky M. Stormo, the university's
chief of police.
The police quickly evacuated the building, but officials did not issue any warnings
to the rest of the campus, Ms. Stormo said. The incident ended quickly when
police discovered that the gunman had killed one woman and himself.
At Virginia Tech, the fact that the assailant was still at large after the initial
shootings has raised questions about the university's two-hour delay in notifying
the campus.
"It's sometimes better to communicate too much than too little," said Ms. Franke.
"That's hard to remember when one is in the middle of these crisis situations."
Colleges worry about causing panic and, if there are no further incidents,
interfering with their operations and desensitizing their students and employees
to future warnings.
Another common concern is that if college officials take a preventive measure by
issuing a warning, they may increase their institutional liability. In other words,
they worry that if they show they are taking more responsibility for keeping
students safe, they could be found accountable if students are harmed. But some
experts discourage that line of thinking.
"My philosophy is that it's better to put the preventive measures into place and
manage them reasonably than shy away from what seems like the right thing to
do, because of liability," Ms. Franke said.
But in the end, public-address systems, sirens, and other alerts may be of very
limited use in a given situation, said Sheldon E. Steinbach, a lawyer in
Washington who advises many colleges.
"None of these mechanisms," he said, "are designed to take on a determined,
obviously now suicidally oriented killer."