Va. Tech stepping up campus safety

BLACKSBURG, Va. - Virginia Tech recommended monitoring troubled students and increasing security Wednesday in an internal report that didn’t address one of the most troubling questions about the massacre: Should administrators have locked down the campus after the first two deaths?\nThe university has said it wants an outside panel to examine that issue and the other actions school staff took in the two hours between the killings of two people in a dormitory and the deaths of 31 more in a classroom building. The report by that panel, established by Gov. Timothy Kaine, is due next week.\nUniversity President Charles Steger acknowledged the school could have taken some steps it didn’t.\n“Looking back, yeah, there are some things that are obvious that, gee, maybe you should have done that, but I think at the time we were doing the best we could, and we’re going to learn from this and try to make it a more secure campus,” he said.\nBut he again defended the university’s decision not to lock down buildings after the first two shootings.\n“Such a lockdown is simply not feasible on a campus that’s the size of a small city,” he said.\nSteger himself said the judgment on the staff’s reaction will have to come from outside the school, and he said he had recommended Kaine set up the separate panel to investigate the handling of the shootings as well as student gunman Seung-Hui Cho’s background.\n“It’s essential that there be an objective assessment for it to be credible,” Steger said.\nSteger had named committees to look at counseling services, security and communication following the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.\nIn calling for the creation of a team of police, counselors and other university personnel to monitor students who may pose a threat to themselves or others, the counseling committee said Virginia Tech needs a better system to deal with such students.\nThe university should also improve security with interior locks on classroom doors and Internet-based message boards alerting the campus of emergencies, the panels said.\nThe university’s security committee recommended instructing students on what to do in emergencies; installing interior locks on 157 general assignment classrooms; removing “drop bar” door handles that can be chained, and installing electronic key card access to academic and administrative buildings.\nDormitories currently are accessed with key cards, and Tech recently required that the cards be used 24 hours a day.\nThe four classrooms that Cho entered in Norris Hall could not be locked from inside, and he had chained exit doors with bar handles to delay police entry into the building.\nVirginia Tech told students and staff of the shooting at West Ambler Johnston dormitory in an e-mail that went out at 9:26 a.m., more than two hours after those killings. By that time, police believe Cho already was in Norris Hall.\nThe panel on relationships between Tech’s counseling services and other departments and agencies cited a federal report on Cho’s shooting rampage that noted confusion about what information can be shared under privacy laws.\n“Sharing critical information is one of the most important aspects of managing the potential for violence with respect to at-risk students,” the panel noted.\nJerome Niles, a retired dean who chaired the committee, said the panel was recommending the addition of two case managers to maintain contact with troubled students. The team dealing with students considered a threat should be able to act quickly, the committee said.