Ship is no exception

By Tom Coccagna

As Virginia Tech police officials fidgeted uncomfortably behind microphones, Cytha Grissom’s heart went out to them. Grissom is Shippensburg University’s chief of police, and as she watched the horror of the Virginia Tech shooting unfold on that bleak April 16, her feelings of sympathy collided with her sense of responsibility for thousands of Shippensburg students and workers.

All you can think of is I hope it doesn’t happen here,” Grissom said, reflecting on the tragedy in which a gunman killed 32 people and himself. “I’m not going to criticize or comment on how they handled the situation, but you do wonder if it happens here, what would you do? We have things in place here. You just have to react as best as you can.”

SU police officers can view multiple cameras per screen while accessing information.

Little did Grissom know that a few days after the tragedy, she and her police officers would have the chance to react to an incident. Late Thursday afternoon of that week, someone noticed a “suspicious box” sitting outside an academic building. The university responded quickly, canceling evening classes.

The container turned out to be nothing more than a box of paper a university employee had placed next to a trash can outside the building, and some cynics might claim the episode had been overblown.

But better to have something get blown out of proportion than to have it blow up in your face. Such is the tightrope university police must walk to ensure campus safety.

“They did a good job reacting to it,” Sam Levy, a sophomore English major, said of the box incident. “In a case like that, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

With Virginia Tech entrenched in the national consciousness, Shippensburg’s box incident made the news wires and was reported in newspapers and on websites all over the country.

“We have steps we would take in that kind of situation regardless of whether Virginia Tech had happened or not,” said Grissom, chief of police since December 2003.

That statement may sound matter-of-fact, but do not miscalculate the zeal she has for keeping Shippensburg as safe as possible. Passion kindled in her voice as she made the next remark: “I’m responsible for the safety of every person on this campus. I am not willing to take any chances to risk anyone’s safety.”

In the backwash of the Virginia Tech tragedy, one hard realization emerges: College campuses will never, can never, be the same again. And no doubt about it, officials at every college across the country have assessed and reassessed measures they take to secure the protection of their students and employees.

How hard is it to maintain campus security? Are there any unequivocal assurances a similar incident would not occur at Shippensburg, or anywhere else, for that matter?

Dr. Peter M. Gigliotti, the executive director of communications and marketing, noted: “There are no absolute guarantees of safety anywhere, and colleges and universities are not removed from that. We are no more immune than anybody else.”

Campus safety involves not only the extreme or lurid – the madman wielding a weapon and barging into a building type of event. It is more of an ongoing process, everyday, nitty gritty, tedious work. Security, when it’s doing its best job, is hardly noticed.

Shippensburg has many fail-safes built into its infrastructure.

Cameras are strategically placed. “It’s unbelievable what you can do with the technology today,” said Herb Bowers, with the university police for 32 years who retired in 2003 after 20 years as chief. “Some cameras are noise or movement sensitive so they don’t have to be running 24 hours.”

Campus is well lighted. At night it is much brighter than it was 20 years ago.

Residence hall card access means unescorted people cannot gain easy entry without being noticed.

Night escort service by police. “If someone is parked in a remote area at night, they can call us and we will give them a ride,” Grissom noted.

Police teach rape aggression defense training and give regular safety lectures in dorms, fraternities and sororities.

New sprinkler systems ensure protection against fire.

These things came about through careful thought and time-consuming discussion.

With that come higher expectations, of course. People now insist upon not only protection but information. One of the criticisms Virginia Tech encountered was a perceived tardiness in getting information to students. That’s something easier said than done.

“We have 6,500 undergraduates, and 2,500 of them live on campus,” Gigliotti said. “That means there are 4,000 I have to reach in a short amount of time. How do I get to all of them quickly?”

Some possible solutions:

An automated system that would dial each person’s cell phone (or even land line) simultaneously with a voice message. Some kinks involving phones with different area codes would have to be solved.

Instant text messaging. To enhance the safety at Ship, the university will implement a text-messaging system that will enable officials to immediately send emergency information to all students. At the start of this fall semester, students will be asked for their text messaging information which will only be used in emergencies.

A lockdown, a popular controversy during the Virginia Tech incident, would be rather impractical. “Even on a small campus, it would be very, very hard to lock it completely down,” Bowers acknowledged. Gigliotti added that without gates or an enveloping fence around a campus that contains 200 acres and more than 50 buildings, a lockdown would be impossible.

There’s the old-fashioned way: a siren. “It’s a case where everything old is new,” Gigliotti said. A siren, which would have to be unique from downtown fire sirens, would alert students to check e-mail or voice mail, or listen to directions from faculty.

No matter what is put in place, nothing will work without one important ingredient: trust.

Grissom realizes the significance of maintaining the trust of the student body.

“The biggest thing is to make students aware that when they are here, they have a safe learning environment,” she said. “We are responsible for their safety, and we do everything we can to keep them safe.”

Bowers agreed. “The bottom line is trust. If you can’t have trust, you won’t get anywhere,” he pointed out.

“If we all work together, we can be as safe as we can possibly be,” Gigliotti said. But in this era when new terms and concepts have obtruded into the vernacular – Columbine, Homeland Security, a color-coded terror alert system – all people want is the reasonable expectation that methods of protection are in place.

“Something like [Virginia Tech] could happen anywhere,” Levy said. “It’s not as if I’m going around worrying about the ways they’re keeping the campus safe.”

It’s like insurance: You may know it’s there, but you hope you never need it – whether it’s dealing with something big like Virginia Tech or something as small as, well, a box of paper.