Campus Security Revisted

After the terrible tragedy recently at Northern Illinois last week, beefing up campus security has been a hot issue in the news media, and on college campuses. Events like these often become the staging ground for political debates on gun control. Gun control groups (and basically all of the European media) claim that catastrophes are the reason that we Americans need to get tough on handguns, while the Ron Paul crowd says that what we need are more guns. Does it have to be all or nothing?

Of course not, as usual, pundits and politicians are missing the big picture here, and college students are the ones who suffer. If you're really interested in how we can improve campus security, listen up.

First, lets not do anything rash. These events are still very rare. A college student is much more likely to be gunned down in his crappy off campus student housing complex than he is in his Biology lecture. The former is actually something that I think is a real problem (and not just because I happen to live in a crappy student housing complex....okay, it is), but has a different solution. Despite the fact that another "Virgina Tech" is rare, we should be as prepared as we can to make sure it doesn't happen again, and if it does, how we can minimize its impact.

Passing out handguns like candy in classrooms sounds like a dangerous idea to me, and I don't typically have a problem with handguns. Concealed carry permits are typically not available to students under 21 (which would be most of your lecture hall attending population), and lowering that age would be irresponsible. College students are not known for being the most responsible (hell, or sober!) demographic, and having them all packing heat seems at the very least, pretty rash. Plus, in that split second when the bad guy pulls out his piece, if 6 other guys are pulling out guns, its going to be pretty hard to determine who the real shooter is, leading to more accidental deaths.

If students don't feel safe off campus, and the law allows for it, they should be able to get a firearm to protect themselves, as allowed in the 2nd amendment. Keep the heat out of math though.

So what do we do? Totally securing a massive state university appears to be pretty impossible. Several universities are implementing a text-message alert system if a situation arises. All students who sign up for the program would get a text telling them what to do, and where to *not* go. Setting this up appears to be pretty inexpensive, and gets the message out to the most people in the shortest amount of time. Sounds like a good idea to me.

But the most important issue here, to me, is how we deal with the mentally ill. The problem isn't people have guns, (or don't have guns), but rather, very crazy people are untreated...and have guns. While University systems can't be expected to fix the problem of treating the mentally ill (which is a flaw in our medical system), they are able to take a more proactive role. I think that universities should add counseling services to their medical centers and insurance plans, and students who appear to be "at risk" (like the Va Tech Shooter clearly was), should be placed into some sort of treatment program. Both American and George Washington made this a priority when I was in the area, and helped a few "at risk" students.

These attacks are a symptom of us ignoring the plight of the mentally ill in America. We don't cover their treatment plans on insurance, we brush aside their disorders as being "moody", or simply try to throw pills at them...and we stupidly continue to allow them to purchase firearms. To be honest, if we had addressed these problems a little more seriously, I believe my dad would still alive. I hope that we don't let these wake up calls be used for political points in the gun control debate, and actually seek to make some meaningful changes.