Public colleges and universities in Massachusetts must do more to prevent campus violence in the wake of last year’s fatal shootings at Virginia Tech, according to a new report described in today’s Boston Globe.

Compiled by safety experts, the report was presented to the state’s Board of Higher Education on Wednesday. The report says that many colleges in the state lack security cameras, armed police officers, and strategies for identifying troubled students and employees.

“Having a threat-assessment team is a no-brainer,” Daniel O’Neill, president of Applied Risk Management and an author of the report, told the Globe. “That single recommendation would save the greatest amount of lives.”

Nonetheless, the report says colleges must consider the costs — financial and otherwise — of various security measures. “Not only do colleges face fiscal constraints limiting the expansion of security protection,” it says, “but security measures should in part be governed by the community’s desire for a free and open campus.” —Eric Hoover