Recommendations From the Report: Steps Colleges Can Take to Avoid a Tragedy, or Deal With One

By ROBIN WILSON

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The report of the state panel that investigated the Virginia Tech shootings lists more than 90 recommendations for state officials, the police, university administrators, and higher-education associations. Following are some of the steps the report says universities should consider taking to avoid a tragedy, or to deal with one after it occurs.

Among other things, the report suggests that colleges:

Security

• Install locks on all classroom doors.
• Create an emergency system that could lock the exterior doors of all campus buildings from a single location.
• Change the hardware on entrance and exit doors to campus buildings so they cannot be chained shut.
• Install security cameras at building entrances and in hallways.
• Train campus police officers to deal with situations that involve an active shooter.

Emergency Preparedness

• Establish a threat-assessment team to monitor students who pose a danger to themselves or others.
• Set up systems to alert the campus to an emergency immediately, with, for example, both sirens and cellphone text messages.
• Give campus police officers the ability to send out emergency messages without consulting with university officials.

Mental Health

• Ask high schools to forward copies of a student's mental-health records after the student is admitted to the college.
• Share mental-health information about a troubled student with a threat-assessment team and other university offices, and with the student's parents.
• Report all incidents of a student's violent behavior to the threat-assessment team.

Weapons

• Clarify the university's policy on whether weapons can be carried on the campus, so that all officials and students know the rules.

Emergency Response

• Cancel classes after an emergency arises.
• Avoid forming a single theory for how a tragedy took place and who is responsible, instead of considering several possible scenarios.
• Establish an emergency-operations center that will be the focus of activity after an emergency takes place.
• Set up an information center to handle communication with the public and the news media.
• Involve trained victim advocates to deal with victims and their relatives.
• Make counseling available to all involved in a tragedy.
• Create ways to inform victims of their rights and tell them what services are available.