As the General Assembly completes the state budget, the University of North Carolina system has been seeking $11.7 million in annual money and $17.5 million in one-time funding to bolster campus safety. Positions in campus security offices would be filled and staff would be provided to help students who seek psychological counseling. Lee Salter, director of counseling at N.C. State University, says that as things now stand, "We can't see all the students who need help." That situation is not acceptable.

And counseling, it should be noted, isn't just about finding and providing help for students with the potential to become dangerous -- students such as the mentally ill young man who killed 32 people and himself last year at Virginia Tech.

Certainly it's important to try to identify any students of that sort, and the UNC system has done an admirable job in having campuses organize better safety plans for spotting such people and for spreading the word quickly on campus should acts of violence occur.

But the fact is that many UNC system campuses are seeing more and more need to provide counseling to get students over the rough spots that can derail them academically. At NCSU, appointments for counseling have gone up by 500 or more in each of the last five years while the staff size hasn't significantly increased.

It's not clear why the need for counseling has risen. Still, it has. Students, particularly those who are freshmen, often find themselves far from home and dealing with issues they've never before encountered -- roommates with drugs, classroom challenges greater than they expected, homesickness, physical problems related to stress.

It's easy enough to say that part of growing up, part of college life, is "toughing it out" through hard times and rising up to meet challenges. In a given student population, however, there are a multitude of different backgrounds -- the kid who was an independent type who has wanted to be on his own for years, and the one who has been sheltered, protected and has a more solitary nature. Both of those young people can have problems they can't handle, and many's the college counselor who has seen both types.

And as one official told The N&O, a counselor can make the difference between a saved semester and a lost one.

On the specific issue of safety, there is of course an increased need for campus officers and support personnel who see to it that a college campus is the sanctuary from danger that it ought to be. In these times, the lawmakers who are charged with providing the funding for the university system will do well to answer that call.

North Carolina has long prided itself on its public universities, noted for spectacular achievement in both the sciences and humanities. Additional money to protect students, and to keep them in that fine system, is a worthwhile investment.

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