Des Moines Register
04-17-07
Massacre provokes reviews in Iowa
Among potential topics of discussion is whether to arm campus police.
By ERIN JORDAN and TOM BARTON
REGISTER STAFF WRITERS
Iowa City, Ia. - When Gang Lu, a 27-year-old disgruntled graduate student from
China, shot and killed five people and then himself on the University of Iowa
campus in November 1991, he changed the way the university looks at potential
tragedies such as happened Monday at Virginia Tech.
The killings 15 years ago, however, did not change a basic U of I policy: that
campus police officers do not carry guns.
The policy was altered slightly in 2002 when officers were issued Tasers, a type
of stun gun.
Officials at colleges across Iowa said Monday that the massacre in Virginia will
lead to renewed discussions about how Iowa schools respond to violence on
their campuses.
Among the expected topics of discussion is whether campus police officers at the
U of I, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa should routinely
carry firearms.
Campus police at the three state universities are trained law officers. They have
periodically asked for permission to carry firearms like fellow law officers who are
employed by city police departments or county sheriff's departments.
But an Iowa Board of Regents policy forbids the police departments at the three
schools from carrying guns in most cases. The university presidents can
authorize campus police to carry firearms on some occasions, said Gary Steinke,
the regents' executive director. Interim U of I President Gary Fethke took that
step last year amid a flurry of sexual assaults on the Iowa City campus, Steinke
said.
But when shots rang out in Van Allen Hall on Nov. 1, 1991, as Gang Lu exacted
revenge on U of I faculty members and a fellow student whom he thought had
wronged him, the first armed officers to arrive on the scene were from the Iowa
City Police Department.
"They called us because they weren't armed," said R.J. Winkelhake, the Iowa
City police chief at the time.
Philip Jones, vice president of student services at the U of I, declined to comment
Monday on whether he expects the issue of arming campus police to surface
following Monday's shootings.
"We investigate all issues of threats that we are aware of," he said. "That's been
standard practice since 1991."
U of I campus police have worked to improve communications with other law
enforcement agencies, Jones said.
Virginia Tech campus police are permitted to carry and use firearms on campus,
according to the university's Web site.
Officials at Iowa colleges and universities were monitoring developments and
taking notes on the response from officials at Virginia Tech.
All of the schools have policies and procedures in place for dealing with
emergencies, but officials were reluctant Monday to discuss those plans in detail.
The plans spell out procedures for making decisions, alerting people on campus,
communicating with the public, evacuating and locking down facilities, and
providing safe shelter.
"We don't want to compromise effectiveness of those plans by publicly disclosing
them in detail, but in the wake of Columbine, our procedures provide for
immediate and aggressive armed response from officers to isolate and contain
those person or persons who are engaged in threatening activity," said ISU
Police Cmdr. Gene Deisinger, "and the goal is to reduce casualties to the
extent that it is possible."
In general, he said, procedures are in place to either evacuate people from
buildings or to lock those buildings to keep intruders out.
At Virginia Tech, questions arose Monday about the university's crisis response.
Those questions focused on a delay of about two hours before school officials
alerted students and faculty members that a gunman had shot students in a
dormitory.
Deisinger, the ISU police official, said: "We have a variety of mechanisms for
communicating with those on and off campus. We'd use building supervisors to
deliver information firsthand to classrooms, as well as residence hall directors
and RA's in the department of residence to notify students. We'd also utilize the
university news service to provide information on the university Web site, in
addition to providing information to news outlets and others via e-mail."
The biggest challenge for a university in a crisis situation is communication,
Deisinger said.
"For example, we have phone trees in existence in several facilities, but the
challenge universities face, as do large corporations, is having multiple facilities
over a large campus. It makes it difficult to get information to people in those
facilities."
John Fuller, a spokesman for Simpson College in Indianola, said college officials
there had informal discussions about Monday's shootings at Virginia Tech.
"It's been mostly to let them know what has happened and to be aware to keep
an eye on reaction on campus," he said.
Fuller said Simpson has a detailed emergency response plan that includes a
campus evacuation if necessary.
Monday's shootings prompted security guards at Drake University to call Des
Moines police.
"Though we don't know where or when these random events will pop up, we are
prepared," said Des Moines Police Sgt. Todd Dykstra. "We do have a tactical unit
that does have a plan in place to deal with this type of situation."
Brooke Benschoter, director of marketing and communications for Drake, said
officials would use the university's computer network to alert students and faculty
members if similar events occurred there.
"The Web is a powerful tool," she said. "We do have a process in place where if
there's any disturbance on or off campus, it notifies personnel immediately."
Reporter Erin Jordan can be reached at (319) 351-6527 or ejordan@dmreg.com