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Tragedy sparks campus review

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by Nick Penzenstadler

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

In light of the shooting massacre at Virginia Tech, University of Wisconsin Assistant Police Chief Dale Burke said Tuesday the university is reviewing its campus emergency plans and will try to learn from Monday's tragedy.

Burke said at a press conference that the university would use a multitude of resources to contact students in the event of a crisis.

"We would attempt to make use of every available means of technology," Burke said. "Websites, e-mail, you name it — whatever is appropriate for the situation."

When asked about locking down buildings and public announcements, Burke said there is no protocol currently in place to individually lock the nearly 300 buildings on campus, since the number of resources necessary to do so would make such a plan unfeasible.

At the request of Chancellor John Wiley, Burke said he and representatives from police forces around the UW System had a conference call to discuss crisis management protocol Tuesday. UW Housing, University Health Services, UW Communications and the dean of students will meet today to discuss similar topics. At a meeting with his officers, Burke said he was asked about the chained doors at Virginia Tech.

"I said, 'If you can get a car there, take the car through the door; you do what you have to do to get in and eliminate the threat,'" Burke said. "There aren't too many places we couldn't get to within five minutes."

When asked about preventing members of the university community from lashing out violently, Burke said there are several warning signs authorities and university officials look for, saying, "People don't just snap."

Burke said students, administrators, faculty and police need to communicate, and pointed to the reports that the Virginia Tech shooter had pictures on his Facebook account toting guns and ammunition as an impetus for scrutiny.

"That kind of information needs to be brought to the attention of people who can do something about it and do a threat assessment," Burke said.

Burke said a group meets regularly on campus to analyze reports of individuals whose behavior has caught the attention of someone on campus.

Burke added that the group determines if intervention is necessary in order to head-off disasters by meeting with students and possibly removing them.

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Anonymous (April 18, 2007 @ 8:09am):

We must be careful to not believe that there is something called a "school shooting." Massacres happen in shopping malls, post offices, restaurants, but our society likes to believe that there is something different about a "school shooting." Of course, when this happens at a school it affects an already established community, and therefore has a deeper impact than, say, a shooting among a group of strangers at a restaurant. Yet massacres happen in all sorts of public places. When we believe in the myth of the "school shooting," we not only glorify schools as spots to attack, we fail to begin a crucial dialogue about the violence that seems to be part and parcel of US culture.

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