Safety on minds of state colleges

By Kent Pierce, wtnh.com

As many students go back on campus, colleges and universities are focusing on safety. Southern Connecticut State University today is focusing on lessons learned from last year’s tragedy at Virginia Tech and steps taken to improve security.

Colleges have now had a year and a half to learn the lessons of Virginia Tech from spotting problem behavior to acting quickly in an emergency. And as college students come back to campus this year, they are going to find some changes on their own campuses because of what happened in Blacksburg, Virginia.

At SCSU today there is a daylong forum about campus safety. The keynote speaker is an expert on disruptive and dangerous student behavior. That might have been the toughest lesson of the Virginia Tech massacre, that there were plenty of warning signs well before Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people last April.

Spotting problem behavior and promoting civility in the classroom are two of the topics they will cover today.

Southern’s public safety director will also talk about the campus safety plan and there will be a roundtable discussion about supporting a culture of campus safety. College campuses all over Connecticut and the nation have made changes, both cultural and technological, to try to prevent a repeat of Virginia Tech.

College life from now on will always include discussions and plans about dealing with campus violence.