How does an administrator balance academic openness with physical security? Across the country, schools are restling with the question—and taking action.

Cathy O’Malley had just dropped her daughter off for her first year of college. That she was at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), the site of the country’s worst shooting massacre in history, ironically seemed less of a worry now than whether her daughter would slow down enough to eat proper meals.

It wouldn’t be truthful to say, however, that O’Malley’s mind didn’t stray to that day last April when 32 students and faculty members were murdered on the Blacksburg, Va., campus. For over a week after student Seung-Hui Cho’s murderous rampage, which ended with his own suicide, she and her husband waited to see if their daughter would change her mind about going in the fall. Like many others, she didn’t.

Since then, O’Malley said the university has assured parents it’s done everything to make the 4-square-mile campus safer, and the authorities more vigilant, than they were a semester before.

“I can say I feel confident in what they are doing,” she said from her Northern Virginia home. “I don’t feel nervous, and I don’t want [my daughter] to feel nervous, because that is not what the university experience is about.”

 O’Malley recalled how her family had been touring the campus on April 15—the day before the killings. At the time, school officials left them with the impression that the rural campus had very little to worry about in terms of crime—on or off the sprawling premises.

“This was a wake-up call for universities across the country,” she added. “It could happen anywhere.”

Taking action

To be sure, colleges and universities have spent the summer beefing up their security and response systems—from providing text-messaging capabilities that enhance real-time emergency notification and securing residence halls, to putting up huge LED (light-emitting diode) screens at campus entrances and “blue light” alert boxes in the hallways.

“I think campuses are facing a significant amount of pressure and I think parents are wondering what their colleges are going to do differently,” offered Brett Sokolow, president of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management, a campus security consulting firm that he founded in 2000. “We need to make sure the right infrastructures are in place to protect our communities and colleges, and universities should be asking these questions—it’s important.”

Certainly, what happened in Virginia wasn’t the first such dose of brutal reality for American schools, which have been expanding and modernizing security since a former university student gunned down 16 people and wounded 31 from a tower at the University of Texas in 1966. More than 30 years later, two disaffected students walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., and killed 13 fellow students and teachers. At the time, a college professor told CNN that it was a “big wake-up call for a lot of people.”

The Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks brought vigilance to a new level. Three years later, when Chechen insurgents stormed an elementary school in Beslan, Russia, it became clear that even elementary schools could be targets for terror. Furthermore, the incident, which left 333 children and adults dead, cast a harsh glare on how Russian SWAT teams reacted and whether they could have brought the siege to an end less violently.

There is no doubt that these lessons were on the minds of the people reviewing the 2007 incident at Virginia Tech, and why they did not ultimately let school authorities off the hook.

“In a world of limited resources, you have to choose what is going to give you the best effect, and I always prefer preventative action over reactive measures,” said Sokolow, who said schools typically spend no more than 2.5 percent of their operating budgets on campus security today.

But his own business has increased some 40 percent since 2000—he now consults with 120 schools. While all are reviewing their mental health services and emergency hotlines, not one has neglected to adopt a text messaging alert system, helping to fill a huge gap in communication for which Virginia Tech reportedly paid an excruciating price.