American campuses 'reasonably' safe

Posted by David Lightman at 4:25 pm CDT

College campuses are among the safer places in America - yet they are also among the most vulnerable terrorist targets, senators were told today.

“It's no secret that campuses have many elements that make them attractive targets for terrorism,” said Steven J. Healy, president of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators. Yet at the same time, he said, “campuses are reasonably safe when compared to the larger communities in which they exist.”

Healy's message was repeated by other experts at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on campus security. Lawmakers heard testimony as students at Virginia Tech, scene of last week's massacre of 32 people, returned to classes.

Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman said he was seeking no quick solutions to outbreaks of campus violence, but hoped to determine if there could be ways such shootings could be prevented. He heard a complex mix of problems and possible solutions, as experts explained that such threats are hardly new.

W. Roger Webb, president of the University of Central Oklahoma and a former state public safety commissioner, noted that law enforcement has to deal with an unusually open environment.

“The academic mindset often assumes there exists some sort of protective moral barrier surrounding our campus,” he said, “and that serious crime is something that happens outside our walls and quadrangles.”

And yet, “There has been a significant rise in the percentage of students coming to us already diagnosed with mental illnesses,” Webb said.

Russ Federman, director of counseling and psychological services at the University of Virginia, produced data suggesting about 8.9 percent of college students have sought help in the past year. “The traditional university counseling center has become a university community mental health center,” he said.

There is also the terrorist threat. Irwin Redlener, professor of clinical public health and pediatrics at Columbia University, noted that schools and college campuses are “known as ‘soft targets'.”

He said, “access is relatively simple, absolutely security virtually impossible and the potential for terror-induced, high degrees of societal-wide grief and reaction are assured.”

As David Ward, president of the American Council on Education put it, “The degree to which we can control extremist acts is extremely small.”

David Lightman reports for the Hartford Courant, a Tribune Co. newspaper.