After the Virginia Tech campus shootings in April, campus security takes proactive measures to better ensure the safety of all students on campus. Funds appropriated to campus security ensure such safety and have allowed campus security the opportunity to use the latest technologies in crime prevention and response.
Layne Huntington, a sophomore in applied mathematics, said though she’s not sure how likely another incident like Virginia Tech is to happen again, she feels safe knowing that measures are being taken to ensure the safety of students.
“I think it’s pretty necessary [to better campus security] considering the circumstances, because some people might think it’s a good idea to do [a school shooting] again,” she said.
In addition to having an accredited police force and the latest cell phone tracking systems, campus police recently purchased an emergency communications van that will be deployed in the case of a campus-wide emergency or crisis.
Huntington said for years campus security trained its police to deal with an armed person.
“Safety has always been a priority here,” he said. “We have pure state-of-the-art weapons here on campus and all of those things are in place and have been in place.”
Tom Younce, director of Campus Police, said though a report on the Virginia Tech incident has not been fully investigated and studied, it is hard to say what measures could prevent such an incident from reoccurring.
“The University has always been supportive in terms of providing things for security,” he said. “There were a lot of things that were in place before Virginia Tech ever took place because we recognized some shortcomings [in campus security].”
Rodriguez Primus, a sophomore in psychology said it’s a good thing that campus security is stepping up after the Virginia Tech incident because of the number of students who attend is increasing and therefore there are more students to protect.
“[The Virginia Tech victims] weren’t warned, no one responded in time, hopefully with this new appropriation of funds that could be avoided at N.C. State,” he said.
David Rainer, Associate Vice Chancellor of Environmental Health and Public Safety said that after the Virginia Tech shootings, campus police made sure to improve communication in an emergency.
“What we’ve started looking at is campus notification tools,” he said. “We want to make sure that if there is an emergency on campus that we’re more efficient at getting information out to various campus constituents.”
Rainer said the future additions to campus security include plans to install alarms with a shelter, and an emergency plan around campus in the case of a campus-wide emergency or crisis to be in place for spring semester.
