How can colleges and universities prepare for the unthinkable? How can students be protected from the unimaginable?
After more than 30 Virginia Tech students and faculty members were gunned down by a student April 16, school administrators nationwide have been considering these questions and re-evaluating security plans to heighten safety on their campuses.
Likewise Alabama Baptist school leaders at the University of Mobile (UM), Samford University in Birmingham and Judson College in Marion are assessing their security and crisis plans.
"As Samford’s president, I feel the burden for ensuring … that we have taken every reasonable step to provide for the safety of our students and employees," Andrew Westmoreland said in a press release. "I acknowledge that, within a free society, there are limits to our ability to control for every circumstance. However, we will seek to learn from this horrible tragedy and to enhance the security of the campus."
Currently Samford’s security staff includes three full-time sworn law enforcement officers and 11 campus safety officers to protect the school’s 4,500 students, according to the release.
Since Judson’s total enrollment is about 300 and UM has about 1,600 registered students, both schools employ fewer security guards and depend more heavily on local police departments for school security.
"We have a very close working relationship with the police department here in Marion," said Ricky Clements, director of facilities and interim director of security at Judson. "We are located one block away from the police office, and Judson College is a part of their regular patrol route."
Staff and student involvement is also very important in deterring criminal activity and avoiding many crisis situations, according to Michael Brooks, assistant to the president for public relations at Judson. "We think there is a high level of engagement here between the faculty and the students," he said. "We don’t think anyone could become isolated here without us checking on them."
Once potentially harmful information is uncovered, Alabama Baptist schools have several ways to contact students and staff. For instance, at UM, messages can be sent to all campus telephones and e-mail accounts. Students in residence halls can be alerted by public address systems, according to Kathy Dean, director of the school’s public relations office. "Prior to this … at Virginia Tech, our security office had already started looking at other technologies for security," she said.
Samford officials had also begun restructuring their campus safety plan several weeks before the Virginia Tech incident occurred.
Each of the Alabama Baptist schools reports relatively low levels of on-campus crime and hopes to keep it that way.
"The safety and security of your students is always at the forefront at any campus," Dean said. "Conversations have been going on, and they are just going to intensify because we live in a very dangerous world. We want to do all we can to keep those that we are responsible for safe." (TAB)
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