When Seung-Hui Cho opened fire at Virginia Tech University two weeks ago - killing 32 people and taking his own life - universities quickly reassessed their own emergency plans.
The Virginia Tech tragedy reinforced the need for heightened campus safety, and the reoccurring debate of stiffer gun laws, morals and ethics entered the national dialogue as well.
Statistics actually show college campuses to be relatively safe places for students.
The murder rate on college campuses was .28 per 100,000 people, compared with 5.5 per 100,000 nationally, according to U.S. News & World Report.
Larger threats on campuses include abuses related to alcohol, and the student suicide rate, the article found.
In balancing the fact that although an unprecedented tragedy such as Virginia Tech is highly unlikely, it is imperative to have adequate security, and scores of universities are revamping their safety systems.
"Its really too bad that it takes something like this to get people thinking about emergency plans, but it shows the sporadic use that the plans will have," said Alex Kingsbury, the associate editor of U.S. News & World Report.
President Richard L. McCormick said the University would be negligent in its responsibility to everyone in the community if it didn't examine communication, security and mental health areas to determine how rapidly Rutgers can respond in emergency situations.
On April 24, the University announced a new tool, which allows for students, faculty and staff to receive alert messages via cell phone. The text alerts are set to be used only in emergencies, including major weather conditions or pending threats. Participants register online at alerts.rutgers.edu by giving their cell phone number. All information given is confidential.
"This system is part of our continuing efforts to improve communications at Rutgers and to help keep our community as safe as possible," McCormick said in a press release.
The alert system was already in place at the University, as cell phone numbers were collected as a way for undergraduate admissions to get into contact with perspective students.
But after Virginia Tech, the University started to explore new ways of enhancing communication between the student populace and administrators.
Universities nationwide are simultaneously adopting new protocol as well. The University of New Mexico recently signed a one-year, $17,000 agreement with Omnilert that makes text messaging software for a mass audience, according to The New Mexico Daily Lobo.
A few years ago, Montclair State University adopted a similar text messaging service with Rave Wireless to bridge the communication gap methods such as e-mail can have, according to U.S. News & World Report.
The in-house service Rutgers implemented is in its infancy stage, with potential modifications to be made over the summer.
Courtney McAnuff, the vice president for enrollment management, said there are some more sophisticated products on the market and the University will look at those over the next several months, but the University wanted something it could carry out in a few days.
"Although this is not replacing the e-mail system, it can take a couple of hours to send out an e-mail to the student body, whereas 25,000 text messages can be sent in 10 minutes," said Gregory S. Blimling, vice president for student affairs.
The service is set to work alongside already in place emergency communication methods such as e-mail, notifying off-campus radio and television stations, and posting notices on the University Web site and RU-tv, the University's campus cable television network, according to the press release.
In the first day of its implementation, McAnuff said 85,000 students gave their information.
The University is working to offer semester-by-semester updated information on students, Blimling said.
"Virginia Tech increased people's awareness of the need to communicate quickly with students," he said. "We realized our system wasn't as strong as it could be."
Unlike universities that ask for a record of perspective students' criminal history on undergraduate applications, Rutgers currently does not have a section on its application.
U.S. News & Report cited that last year the common application - currently used by 300 schools - asks if the applicant has ever been subject to disciplinary action in high school, convicted of a crime or suspended. Although Rutgers does not ask for the criminal history currently, McAnuff said a faculty committee looking at admissions policy will consider revising the application and adding the section.
McAnuff reasons if a student answered yes to one of the questions, "It doesn't preclude admission but means we would pay some significant attention to what they did and see how serious it is."
He cautions that schools that already have the criminal history questions in place typically experience three or four people suspended from school cases. "Ninety five percent of those cases are real childish instances," he said.
Blimling believes the University does a good job at identifying students who are under stress or have mental health concerns.
On a national basis, he said the International Association of Counseling Services did a study in 2006 that surveyed about 380 universities. The study reported 9 percent of students use the counseling center each year, and 25 percent of those are on some type of drug medication. Approximately 8 percent were in a severe state of mental health, Blimling said.
"This year we've had around 90 different crisis just in the residence halls. And of those probably one-third of those students that we worked to help get into a hospital to be cared for," Blimling added.
Kingsbury said the low numbers of students seeking mental help could result from the way the nation perceives mental illness.
"The immediate thing that I thought of when [Virginia Tech] happened, was the last person who had a mental episode on television. The astronaut [Lisa Marie Nowak] had a clear mental break down, and the fact there were weeks of making jokes on this exemplifies the way the media handles mental illness not with the utmost care it deserves sometimes," Kingsbury said.
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