In the wake of the Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University shootings, universities across the country continue to reevaluate emergency response plans and systems.
These horrific killings reveal a harsh reality about the times we live in. Terror-inducing attacks like Virginia Tech and NIU's are impossible to prevent in a collegiate landscape.
Such incidents are the equivalent of walking into a mall with a concealed weapon and opening fire in the middle of a food court. Sure, it's a suspect location for such a crime these days (sadly), but there are no logistically and financially rational means to screen the people coming in and out of the location. The same goes on a decently sized college campus.
Security and police detail at shopping malls and universities face the same dilemma. There are thousands of people on foot, many of whom carrying bags and most appearing to have a purpose. A mall has limited entry points, but logic verifies the difficulty in screening entry to an entire campus.
After Virigina Tech's incident, the media and universities emphasized the importance of developing alert systems in the event of campus emergencies and announcements. These serve purpose in situations such as class cancellations, natural disasters and campus lockdowns - however you "lockdown" acres of land without a fence, that is.
When a gunman attacks, the alerts can prevent more people from ending up in the line of fire. The alerts can't, however, prevent an initial attack from happening.
It's important to keep a campus community informed in the midst of chaotic and troubling instances, and that's an increasingly difficult task given our attention spans and mediated lifestyles. Even text message systems take time to process, and that's after the go-ahead to send the message makes its way through bureaucratic channels.
NIU notified the campus community within 30 minutes via e-mail messages to students and faculty plus an alert on the school's Web site, according to news reports. By then chaos was well into motion, but the killer's rampage was already complete.
An article on www.NorthernStar.info - NIU's campus paper - published Feb. 14 provided student accounts of where they were when they found out, tales of a fate becoming all too familiar in our generation.
"I saw everyone sprinting and screaming and I saw two bloody people sprinting and screaming to 'Get away; there was a shooting in Cole Hall,'" Kristin McCafferty, a junior psychology student, said in the article. "And there was a million police headed to Cole Hall."
The story continues with similar insights, illustrating the fact that most students heard by word of mouth or with their own senses, not by a digital alert.
If universities are serious about real-time dissemination they need look to a more traditional form of communication. In high school we lived by the toll of the bell, an often synthesized sound effect broadcast through an internal public address system. Recall the malls, most of which have centralized sources of music and thus the ability to make a system-wide announcement.
This brings us to another unfortunate reality of our time: Universities need to examine the possibility of campus-wide public address systems.
Given the extraordinarily networked nature of college campuses today, campus-wide public address systems are surprisingly uncommon. Tornado and emergency sirens serve a similar purpose, but lack the ability to provide bare facts. A PA system can do just that.
Sure, the use of this expensive system is limited to highly urgent and life-threatening situations, but we shouldn't be putting price tags on lives. At the very least, building PA systems should be explored when constructing new academic buildings and dorms, not only at Ball State University but at campuses across the country.
In most cases these alerts are mid- and post-emergency measures. They can't prevent these situations from happening nor tell us that incidents are about to happen. We can't expect text messages before an initial attack saying, "Warning: a gunman is about to enter your building." The alerts can only help control a situation once it is taking place. It's a sick fact of life our generation must live with, and has since the 1999 Columbine High School attack.
Above everything else, remember that no form of technology can replace human vigilance.
Write to Dave at heydave@bewilderedsociety.com
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