Campuses are quick to sound the alarms

Fearing a Virginia Tech-style shooting, colleges and universities haven't been shy in recent days about broadcasting warnings and launching their new emergency action plans.

With the February killings at Northern Illinois University fresh in their minds, university leaders in North Carolina say they must be willing to respond to potential threats even if some accuse them of overreacting.

After a young woman was found shot dead Wednesday morning near downtown Chapel Hill, UNC safety officials used cell phone text messaging, a new Web page and e-mail to disseminate a description of the unidentified victim.

On Monday afternoon, Appalachian State University ended up with an unexpected real-time drill for its campus lockdown procedures after a student invented a story about a masked gunman roaming the campus. The same day, N.C. State tested the sirens for its new emergency notification system on a campus largely emptied for spring break.

And last week, Elizabeth City State leaders apologized for an ill-conceived drill in which an undercover officer with a fake gun burst into a classroom and terrified students and a professor.

The air-raid-style sirens, text-messages, mass e-mail and lockdown plans are signs of a new reality since a student gunman's rampage left 32 dead at Virginia Tech in April. For students, staff and faculty, however, that does not translate into complete peace of mind.

Everyone realizes now that they don't live in a bubble, said Tomasi Larry, student body president at N.C. Central University. "It's on everyone's radar," Larry said. "We try to go on with our lives, but it's always on our minds."

At Duke University, officials have communicated with students about warning systems, including an emergency Web site, new towers to enhance signals and low-tech tools such as tacking fliers to the walls of residence halls.

Justin Maletsky, a senior from New Jersey, thinks that's all the university can do. It's unreasonable to expect a campus to be totally safe, Maletsky said.

"It's like getting behind the wheel of a car; there are risks," he said. "But I don't feel that Duke is any less safe than any other university."

Cell phone red alert

At N.C. State, about 12,500 students, faculty and staff members (about 30 percent of the campus community) have registered their cell phone numbers to receive emergency text messages, said David Rainer, the university's associate vice chancellor for environmental health and public safety.

"The only thing that we really did change after Virginia Tech was we wanted to enhance our ability to notify the campus if there is a campuswide emergency," Rainer said. "The issue for us is you can't use one notification tool. You have to use redundant systems, and we operate under the premise that we will, in a major emergency, use all the tools we have to get information out."

Yet some students and staff still have specific concerns about what they are expected to do if, say, a gun-wielding student storms a classroom building.

Lisa Marshall, a coordinator in N.C. State's nuclear engineering department, said she still hears students and faculty wonder whether they should block a classroom door with their desks or try to escape through windows.

"How do you get people to move quickly?" she said. "In that sense, it's about getting people to act."

UNC-CH will test the new sirens for its new Alert Carolina campaign March 19, and public safety officials have taken out ads in The Daily Tar Heel student newspaper and on Chapel Hill buses to inform the university community about the program.