BOSTON--Only a handful of Massachusetts' 29 public colleges and universities are equipped to thwart a major act of on-campus violence, a security consultant told the state Board of Higher Education last week.
Arming security guards, upping video surveillance, expanding mental health services and forming threat assessment teams were a few of the recommendations that Applied Risk Management, a consultant firm, made in a 114-page assessment of each school's violence prevention and response practices.
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"Despite the fact that violence is rare, there is a contagion around school shooters," said ARM President Dan O'Neill, an author of the report. "Schools should take immediate steps to prevent and prepare for the most extreme forms of violence."
The security assessment was prompted after last year's Virginia Tech shootings, when Seung-Hui Cho, an undergraduate with a history of mental illness, killed 32 students and staff before turning the gun on himself in the worst act of gun violence in U.S. history.
Since then, only five public colleges and universities in Massachusetts -- Bridgewater State, Salem State, Fitchburg State, Mount Wachusett Community College and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst -- have adopted adequate security practices to prevent an incident of that magnitude, O'Neill said.
"It is my belief that Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter, would not have slipped through the cracks at these schools, as they all have outstanding threat assessment teams and mental health services," he said. "If he did somehow slip through the cracks, the campus police at these schools are properly trained and equipped, and would have neutralized him in an efficient manner."
In Amherst, UMass has trained its campus police in interpreting violent writing, formed an assessment team to identify and investigate potentially violent individuals, installed 500 surveillance cameras (some with video analytics), and distributed published policies on how students should react if there were a shooter on campus.
Although the assessment found that most state schools are far behind the standard set by UMass, it wasn't all bad news.
"We were pleased to find that all of the surveyed colleges and universities have prepared All-Hazard Emergency Response Plans, all have emergency mass notification systems and 83 percent have on-campus mental health services," O'Neill said.
After the Virginia Tech shootings, the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security required all state schools to submit emergency response plans, according to Tryntje Gill, assistant to the director of employee relations at the Board of Higher Education.
While all of the response plans were deemed sufficient, she said, "Whether or not the schools practice them enough is another question."
Gill said that the board plans to be more vigilant in making sure that vulnerable state schools enhance (and practice) their violence prevention and response programs.
"Our first focus is to keep the lines of communication open," she said. "We're in the process of drafting a correspondence to the presidents and chancellors of public higher education institutions urging them to implement many of the recommendations in the report. Even though the chances of there being a school shooting are very remote, we all agree that this needs to be done, that the safety of students and faculty is our first and foremost priority."
