Utah colleges evaluating safety

The tragic events at Virginia Tech have university presidents and officials in Utah thinking about campus safety policies and possible revisions to keep Utah's students as safe as possible.

"You don't expect it's going to happen on your campus, but this has definitely heightened the awareness for everyone on every campus," said Weber State University President F. Ann Millner. "However, there is no perfect solution."

As is the case in nearly all of Utah's 10 public colleges and universities, Millner said an already-existing emergency-management committee at the university has been discussing new safety measures in light of the emerging details from the deadly shooting spree at Virginia Tech.

Millner said Weber has had a shooting on campus, where a student who was the subject of a disciplinary hearing shot and wounded three people before being fatally wounded by one of his victims, a campus police officer. Student safety was of utmost importance during that incident.

"We're always concerned with being best able to communicate with and respond to the needs of the campus," she said. Campuswide e-mail, a phone tree and voice-mail notification systems are the primary methods WSU officials use to communicate with students in an emergency. Those methods are being criticized for their inefficiency in the Virginia Tech situation, though, and Millner said other options are being looked at on a "building level."

"We will look at the lessons learned from what happened there and update our plan based on learning from their experiences," she said.

University of Utah spokeswoman Coralie Alder said the U. underwent intensive security planning to prepare for the 2002 Winter Games. "We continue to refine that safety and security plan as we go along," she said.

U. President Michael Young earlier this year commissioned a task force that will review campus security policies. That review will likely be accelerated in light of the Virginia Tech massacre, Alder said.

At Southern Utah University, President Michael T. Benson has gone as far as e-mailing the school's emergency plan to every student "to ease their concern," he said.

The policy has also been posted on the school newspaper's Web site. "Students are talking about it. They are asking their teachers about it and faculty is discussing it," he said. "This has caused the whole campus to re-evaluate."

Many colleges and universities in Utah already have safeguards in place to prevent certain emergency situations from getting out of hand. But random acts, such as Monday's shooting massacre, have many institutions re-evaluating.