Midwestern Higher Education Compact — White Paper
The Ripple Effect of Virginia Tech
Assessing the Nationwide Impact on Campus Safety and Security Policy and Practice

Introduction — In the wake of the April 16 tragedy at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) colleges and universities across the country reviewed their emergency procedures and response systems and pursued new and enhanced processes and technologies to improve communications and mobilization.

The shootings also spurred renewed discussion and debate about gun safety and weapons regulation, mental health counseling, and the often difficult balance between student privacy and parental and community “need-toknow” (Rossi and Jordan, 2007; Shuchman, 2007). Task forces, committees, special panels, and commissions to review campus safety policies, procedures, and practices have been convened at the institutional, state, and even federal level (Lake, 2007; Nash, 2007; “Report to the President,” 2007; Vu, 2007). Indeed, college or university leaders who did not engage in some form of public effort to review the safety-related physical, administrative, and policy infrastructure of their campuses risked accusations of negligence or even malfeasance.

Understandably, the Virginia Tech tragedy led students, parents, lawmakers, and the media to ask whether a particular institution or campuses in general were “safe.” In response to this question, a university professor of criminal justice wrote in USA Today that between 2001 and 2005 fewer than 10 students a year on average were murdered on college campuses. Given nationwide college enrollment of 17.5 million in 2005, the professor asserted that “the chances of being murdered on campus are about as likely as being fatally struck by lightening” (Fox, 2007). Homicides that do occur on college campuses tend to be the result of domestic disputes, drug dealings, or other circumstances where the assailant and victim are known to each other—a pattern similar to what is seen in general society. Nonetheless, horrific events of significant scale with ubiquitous and relentless nationwide media coverage—Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois, Columbine, Red Lake, Nickel Mines, Jonesboro—exert a powerful impact on the psyche and basic instincts of students, parents, policymakers, and the general public, leading to the understandable questioning of the relative safety of a specific campus or of educational facilities in general.

Of course, no college or university can ever guarantee that its campus is 100% “safe” because “safe” is a relative concept. The objective of any institution is to create an environment that is as safe as possible given the realities of the external environment and the inability to control the actions of all people at all times. The American Council on Education (1985) recommended more than 20 years ago that an institution should “marshal those forces within its control so as to provide that its students and employees are able to enjoy on campus at least that average degree of security enjoyed by similar situated citizens of the surrounding community” (p.1). No amount of money, technology, and human resources can guarantee members of a university community that they will never fall victim to a crime. At the same time, colleges and universities are by their very nature open-access environments where people move between and among buildings and outdoor spaces in a manner akin to the free flow and exchange of ideas, discussion, and debate that is a raison d’etre of the academy.

Writing for the National Association of College and University Attorneys, Burling (1991) asserted that “only by conceding that colleges and universities cannot protect every student every minute of the day, and that some kinds of violence are unforeseeable, can universities continue to provide the education they were established to offer” (p. 18).
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