By Matthew Roland
After the Virginia Tech shooting, as with any catastrophic loss of human life, many questions were raised. The public wanted to know how such a horrible thing could happen. Why did it take so long for police to respond? Why weren’t security measures in place to deal with an incident like this? Who messed up, and what needs to be done about it? Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on the perspective, mass shootings are not all that common, especially on college campuses. While it’s good that events like VA Tech are rare and isolated, it is their infrequency that leaves security personnel, police, and school administrators at a loss for how to deal such an event.
Many people were quick to blame the administrators and campus police of VA Tech for not dealing with the threat more quickly or preventing it in the first place. However, not many members of the media acknowledged the inherent problems of securing a large campus like VA Tech or, for that matter, any college campus. Many high schools across the country have measures in place to deal with a shooting like that at VA Tech. Why aren’t colleges as prepared as high schools for catastrophe?
In order to understand the problems associated with college security, we’ll compare two Colorado Springs schools: Doherty High School and Pikes Peak Community College. Doherty is a very secure and safety conscience high school. Their lead security guard, Ronald Butler, was willing to disclose some of the security policies and procedures currently in place to protect the school.
The easiest way to deal with a human security threat is deterrence. The obvious physical presence of security personnel has a powerful effect on the mind of any person planning to commit a crime. The knowledge that a criminal undertaking will face opposition almost immediately is often enough to make a person think twice about carrying out their plans.
Doherty High School has retired police officers, serving as security guards, at all the entrances and throughout the hallways, monitoring both students and visitors. They are not armed, but they do carry radios, and can quickly contact the Colorado Springs Police Department. The CSPD SWAT Team trains in and knows the layout of all Colorado Springs high schools. This security measure is employed at Pikes Peak Community College which has its own police department, as do many colleges and universities. These police officers are certified by the state, and armed.
At Pikes Peak Community College, they roam the campus, and watch the parking lots and access roads as well. However, on a campus as large as that of VA Tech, the force of security guards and police officers is stretched far thinner than it is at a community college.
If a security threat cannot be deterred, the most important factor in countering the threat is recognition. If security personnel do not know who or where the threat is, the task of stopping the threat becomes far more difficult. In the modern age, cameras are the most effective way to observe students, and recognize threats. Ronald Butler, the lead security officer at Doherty High School said, “I couldn’t believe that VA Tech didn’t have cameras, that was the first thing I questioned.”
When asked whether or not Doherty had cameras, Butler said, “Of course. We watch everything that goes on here. The problem with watching a college or university campus via camera is, again, size. The price of emplacing cameras all over a large campus is enormous. In addition, in order to be effective, they must be maintained and watched at all times.
One of the key sources of criticism in the case of VA Tech was the inability of the campus police to stop the perpetrator of the first shooting from moving across campus and continuing his rampage. Unfortunately, short of catching him in the act, there was very little the police could do to intercept Seung-Hui Cho. Without cameras to identify him, the police did not initially know who perpetrated the first shooting, and in a school of 26,000 students who are constantly moving, it is nearly impossible to track just one.
There is nothing out of place about a student, a senior no less, wearing regular clothes and a backpack moving across campus, even after a double murder. While Doherty High School watches each of its two main entrances and requires students to show IDs, it is a small, single building school. Pikes Peak Community College is small compared to many colleges and universities, and the Centennial Campus alone has over a dozen entrances. It would be nearly impossible to completely stop the flow of students in and out of school at most colleges and universities, especially without prior notice.
For one local high school, the three biggest safety measures taken to prevent a catastrophe are deterrence via the presence of security personnel, monitoring of the student population by video camera, and control of the flow of students through the limitation and control of entry points. For one local college, only the first two measures can be realistically employed. The question is whether or not they are enough. Is it really possible to secure a college or university campus from the threat of a suicidal student? Perhaps, though, the most relevant question is this: How do we prevent those around us from reaching the point where they are capable of such an act?
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