Leaders are pushing
for a way for higher education schools to work together to share ideas to keep
students safe.
Senator Mark Warner
is re-introducing the CAMPUS Safety Act. It would consolidate existing federal
campus safety programs into a national center, giving colleges and universities
a central location to share information, research and training to help keep
schools safer.
Electronic key card
access to dorm rooms, blue emergency phones and campus alerts sent by text
message, email and over social media are just some of the security measures put
in place over the last few years at Roanoke College.
"You're trying to
anticipate and mitigate crisis before they happen" said Tom Turner, the Roanoke
College director of campus safety, who has worked at the school for 29 years.
He says many national
safety initiatives focus on kindergarten through twelfth grade, not colleges and
it's been up to them to learn new ways to keep students safe.
"I think having a
national center can bring all that information together and have one clearing
house and would be very useful" said Turner.
By bringing together
higher ed schools from across the country, they'll be able to learn what safety
measures work and what don't especially for colleges with similar sizes.
"Nobody wants to send
their son or daughter to an institution that's kind of tried to figure this out
on their own, you would want them to know what the best practices are" said Dr.
Gene Zdziarski, Roanoke College dean of students, who says this isn't a new
idea.
Dr. Zdziarski has
been on Department of Education task forces in the past that wanted the same
thing.
"I think we do as
well as we can, but if we were involved in a collective effort nationally it
would not only improve Roanoke College but it would improve crisis response for
campuses across the country" said Dr. Zdziarski.
Virginia
Tech Associate Vice President for University
Relations Larry Hincker tells WSLS campus alerts didn't exist before their
tragedy
in 2007 and it's become common across the country since. Lessons learned from the shooting also helped
pave the way for school threat assessment teams, something that was just being
developed at the time.
"Anything
to improve communication makes sense" says Hincker about the proposed CAMPUS
Safety Act.
The hope is this
latest proposed safety measure will take cross country communication one step further.
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