How safe are college campuses?

The shootings at Virginia Tech may challenge a cherished culture of openness.

from the April 18, 2007 edition

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Random mass shootings have generally been rare at colleges. Before the Virginia Tech massacre, the worst campus shooting took place in 1966 at the University of Texas at Austin, when Charles Whitman killed 16 people from the observation deck of a clock tower before he was gunned down. Instead, colleges have tended to focus on assaults, rapes, and other violent crimes. Since the "Clery Act" was enacted in 1990 – named for Jeanne Clery, raped and murdered in her Lehigh University dorm room – colleges have been required to report violent crimes on campus and notify students when it takes place. Such crimes have tended to mirror national statistics, dropping sharply between 1994 and 2002 and edging up since then, says Lori Sudderth, director of Quinnipiac University's criminal justice program.

"We are in a better situation than we were 10 to 20 years ago," Professor Sudderth says. "Victims of violence have more ways to report it than before." In 2005, FBI statistics show that Virginia Tech, with a student body of 27,619, had only four reported violent crimes – fairly typical for a large university. However, Sudderth says, the reported numbers usually underestimate the problem, with crimes like sexual assaults often vastly underreported.

Like Levin, Sudderth hopes the Virginia Tech incident makes universities look more closely at security and ways to treat students with mental-health problems. "I would hope we at least ask, 'What do you look for in a violent offender? How do you intervene earlier?'"

While locking down an entire campus or putting metal detectors in every building may not be feasible, there are some physical security measures universities can do. Many have already locked dormitories, for instance.

Installing monitored TV systems could also help, says Paul Viollis, CEO of Risk Control Strategies. That could have helped police at Virginia Tech target the shooter after the first incident was called in, he says, since stopping and frisking thousands of students isn't feasible. "The security architecture of college campuses needs to be improved," Mr. Viollis says. "But for the most part, that will assist in reacting.... The preventative part is really the key....When you put a Band-Aid on the outside, the cause is still there."

Faculty and students, he says, could be educated on what signs to look for – someone who's socially isolated, has low self-worth, doesn't take criticism well, and may have put out early signals about his intentions in the hope of getting someone to intercede.

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