Members of the North Carolina Task Force on Campus Safety met Wednesday afternoon at Shaw University to begin talks on how to improve procedures at universities across the state.

The meeting served to introduce the Task Force to how safety is enforced at North Carolina schools and begin discussion on how to improve it, in the wake of April’s Virginia Tech tragedy.

Chief of Police Tom Younce and David Rainer, the vice chancellor for health and safety, were in attendance representing the University as part of the 21-member Task Force.

Presenters such as Aaron Graves, the associate vice president of campus safety and security at Duke, talked about national programs that can help train and provide resources for safety units on college campuses. Graves’ group, International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators, is one group that works to find contemporary safety issues and work to find a way to help them, according to Graves.

“We’ve put together tools for universities for reviewing emergency procedures,” he said.

Jeff McCracken, the president of the North Carolina Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators spoke on the variety of police and security personnel on North Carolina campuses and the efforts that are undertaken to train them.

McCracken noted that one of the most important aspects of insuring students’ safety is communication with first response units outside the campus. In N.C. State’s case, this would be the Raleigh and Wake County units.

“It’s not only how we communicate on campus, but how we communicate with first responders in the area,” he said.

Most campuses, including Virginia Tech, use e-mail alert systems in case of an emergency, according to McCracken, who added that this may need to change.

“That just doesn’t work,” he said.

The Virginia Tech and Blacksburg police chiefs will be meeting with NACLEA members in the near future to discuss what they learned and what should be done in response to the tragedy.

The amount of training for smaller schools has been an issue for the state, according to McCracken. This may be due partially to lack of funding.

“It always seems that other state agencies get first swipe at funding,” he said. “How that works needs to be changed.”

Issues such as funding for safety will be on the docket in the coming months for the Task Force, who will discuss a wide array of ideas on how to increase safety on campuses across the state.

Rainer joined a panel of three officials to address what campuses in the state are doing now to address safety concerns.