July 7, 2008—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 recently.
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.
“Having a threat assessment team is an absolute no-brainer, and it could be done tomorrow,” said Daniel O’Neill, an author of the report and president of Applied Risk Management, a security consultant. “That single recommendation would save the greatest amount of lives.”
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.
”
For more information, see the Applied Risk Management Web site.
