Va. Tech’s security response raises questions

Two-hour window
Some students were upset that the gunman was able to strike a second time, saying the first notification they got of the shootings came in an e-mail at 9:26 a.m. The e-mail mentioned a “shooting incident” at West Ambler Johnston, said police were investigating, and asked students to be cautious and contact police about anything suspicious.

Student Maurice Hiller said he went to a 9 a.m. class two buildings away from the engineering building, and no warnings were coming over the outdoor public address system on campus at the time.

“I was troubled with the fact that two hours elapsed from the first shooting,” said Brant Martel, 23, a junior. “I just feel they were a little slow on their response.”

But Edmund Henneke, an associate dean of engineering who was in the building where the second round of shootings occurred, said criticism of the authorities’ response was unfair.

“We have a huge campus,” he said. “You have to close down a small town and you can’t close down every way in or out.”

Emergency communications in place?
Security experts not connected with Virginia Tech said their immediate questions focused on whether the university had adopted and practiced a plan to handle such dire crises, and whether its system of emergency communications was state-of-the-art.

“The key is to have a solid communications component in place to deal with notifying students, parents, faculty, staff and the media what’s going on,” said Kenneth Trump of National School and Safety Services in Cleveland.

“The most critical element that falls apart in any type of emergency, especially at educational institutions, is often communications,” he said.

University officials acknowledged that crisis communication is a challenge on such a large campus. They said they have been working on creating an alert system that would send text messages to staff and student cell phones, but the system is not yet ready.

Training is crucial
Michael Dorn of Safe Havens International in Macon, Ga., which has advised many universities on security measures, said campus emergency plans can be ineffective unless staff and students are trained on how to cooperate.

“They can make the difference between one or two people being victimized and larger numbers,” Dorn said. “But it’s a lot harder to do that in higher education that in a K-12 school. A lot of higher ed officials don’t have the basic things in place that our K-12 schools have.”

It was second time in less than a year that the Virginia Tech campus was closed because of a shooting.

Last August, the opening day of classes was canceled and the campus closed when an escaped jail inmate allegedly killed a hospital guard off campus and fled to the Tech area. A sheriff’s deputy involved in the manhunt was killed on a trail just off campus. The accused gunman, William Morva, faces capital murder charges.

As for other crime on campus, Virginia Tech reported just eight arrests for illegal weapons possession from 2003-05, according to statistics posted by the U.S. Department of Education. Flinchum said weapons are not allowed on campus.

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