Bee Editorial
Additional campus security measures not the answer
The college community at Virginia Tech is still responding to the massacre that took place Monday morning, in the sense that officials are answering questions as to why it happened.

The first question was, why wasn't the school put on lockdown sooner? And the second was, why weren't students notified of the first shooting until hours later?

One of the follow-up questions will be about security and what should or could have been done sooner. This will renew the debate on where cameras, metal detectors and security personnel belong on a college campus.

Should metal detectors be routine devices at the entrance of each dorm, academic building and community space on a college campus? That's not the answer. While precautions and emergency response plans are part of a campus, lockdown is not. Students make up the largest part of a college community, but the doors are open to scholars, residents, spectators and visitors.

While elementary, middle and high schools responded to the Columbine High School tragedy by locking all entrances and placing monitors at the main entrances, the same simply can't be done on a college campus.

Does this leave students vulnerable? Of course, but how does a college begin to protect its thousands of students? By putting a fence around the campus, manned by armed security? Locking doors to every computer lab, library, gymnasium and arena?

What about the quads, outdoor sports fields, parking lots? How can you protect places of that scale? Envision the campuses at the University at Buffalo and Erie Community College's sites in Amherst, Buffalo and Orchard Park. They are wide-open spaces, with parking lots positioned at every corner of the property, and thousands of doors. Doors that hundreds of thousands of people use every year to access the amenities of that institution.

Swipe cards that would afford students and faculty private access to such resources as a library would bar still others who would benefit from its reference materials. Additionally, swipe cards would not have prevented the Virginia Tech shooter from carrying out his mission.

Administrators can only do so much to shield those on the campus. While what happened at Virginia Tech is horrific, was it preventable? Could that man, who was simply a monster, have been stopped?

National media outlets are reporting that his attack may have been planned. A college would have a hard time combating the evil that was plotted on Monday.