Safety

For more than 35 years, Barton County Community College in central Kansas has been preparing students for success through a blend of classroom and practical hands-on education. A majority of the school’s degree programs incorporate the use of technology to prepare students for today’s workforce, while its wired buildings and computer labs ensure that technology access is at the fingertips of its more than 5,000 students.

Recent events have understandably triggered a flurry of crisis preparedness efforts at colleges and universities across the country. Many of these institutions are today breathing easier now that they have incident response plans the size of phone books resting in drawers or populating intranets. They feel confident that in an emergency they can evacuate parties at risk in a timely organized manner — perhaps.

THE DANGERS PEOPLE MIGHT encounter on a college campus are the same as those on a city street. Since there is no way to know when a security incident might occur (unless, say, someone calls in a bomb threat), campus leaders are relying on proper training to enable their security personnel to predict such incidents and respond appropriately.

While security personnel at community colleges deal with the same challenges faced by their counterparts at four-year institutions, there are some twists presented by the more fluid nature of the population at two-year institutions.

THERE IS A NEW "SIN" INDUSTRY on college campuses. It’s not beer, fast food, or tobacco. It’s water! Universities around the nation have begun to deny students the option of drinking bottled water, removing it from vending machines and campus stores.

THE CALL CAME IN AT 9:22 P.M. ON THURSDAY, APRIL 2, FROM THE Radford University (Va.) EMS team, an all-student, volunteer rescue squad, that there had been a fatal shooting just one block from campus. Dennie Templeton, who directs the school’s Office of Emergency Preparedness, remembers the time exactly, because within 15 minutes he had set up an emergency operations center (EOC) to interact with the outside responders who were fast arriving at the 9,500-student school.

With more than 50 percent of all identity-related security breaches occurring on college campuses(1) and high profile cases making headlines nationwide, security and identity management are top concerns for higher education institutions. Breaches carry grim consequences—including potential loss of thousands or even millions of dollars, not to mention negative publicity, which can result in lost funding or decreased enrollment.

I HAVE LEARNED THAT THIS COLUMN CAN touch a few nerves. Two examples of this are editorials I wrote about guns and alcohol, both of which continue to draw reader response long after they were published.

College students today are walking around on campuses with their privacy protected and their safety at risk. But the laws and regulations that govern the privacy of student information, including medical and mental health records, also permit sharing under certain circumstances.

AS AN ENTHUSIASTIC signatory to the Amethyst Initiative, a joint statement issued by college and university presidents and chancellors urging public debate on the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, I am pleased to say the discussion is certainly underway.

DO ANY OF THE FOLLOWING campus disputes sound familiar to you?

--An academic department chair is struggling with warring factions among the faculty who do not get along and are engaged in petty in fighting.