Classes are in full swing throughout the SUNY system, campuses are bustling and, at first glance, the memory of a tragic act of violence would seem the last thing on anyone’s mind.

But the shooting massacre last April by a mentally ill student at Virginia Tech Univer-sity that left 33 people dead — including the gunman — has been very much on the minds of those charged with safeguarding students, faculty and staff at SUNY.

And a number of UUP members — often working with their colleagues in other unions on campus — have been at the forefront of the effort since then to make SUNY as safe as it possibly can be from emergencies of all kinds.

Last spring, the SUNY chancellor appointed seven UUP members to the Chancellor’s Task Force on Critical Incident Manage-ment. If one message can be taken from that report, it is this: Campuses need to build a network of approaches for dealing with violence, and they need to structure those approaches under three categories: risk assessment and mental health issues; emergency response; and communications technology. (See story on page 7 for details on the report.)

UUPers working in these areas at several SUNY institutions said their campuses either have adopted this “network” approach, or are putting it in place now.

It is expected that a large number of SUNY campuses will participate in the New York Alert electronic messaging system that asks faculty, students and parents to voluntarily provide an e-mail address or cell phone number for campus-wide notifications of emergencies. The system has just become available to SUNY.

“Emergencies” don’t necessarily mean violence; the warnings could also pertain to natural disasters and severe storms, according to those working with NY Alert.

“It will be available for every campus, if they wish, and most will use it,” said Dave Hubeny, a UUP member and the emergency manager at the Binghamton campus. “It’s a very significant step.”

At Binghamton, where NY Alert is one of several heightened measures to warn the campus community of danger, parents and students appear to find the measures reassuring rather than intrusive, Hubeny said.

“This summer, at every one of our orientation sessions, we had a discussion on this topic,” Hubeny said. “Parents did not have concerns. They want to know their children are safe.”

A system of widespread alerts

After the Virginia Tech shootings, a number of off-campus students who were en route to classes from off-campus homes the morning of the rampage said they would never have entered the campus had they known a gunman was loose. School officials said they had tried to alert the campus, but the school had no system for reaching all students.

There is no single alert system that can reach everyone, Hubeny said, so Binghamton has opted for a network of approaches. The campus is installing a system of sirens in heavily populated areas; the sirens will alert people to take shelter. New electronic message boards around campus can also be programmed to display warnings and information in case of an emergency. And the campus also made a change to its computer system, so that anyone on a computer using a Web browser through Binghamton’s server will be automatically redirected to a site with emergency information.

“That’s the key to emergency communications: to cover all bases,” said Daniel Sidebottom, a UUP member and director of administrative computing services at SUNY Cortland.

Cortland’s campus telephones use an electronic alert system called “Informacast,” which can send alarms, verbal messages or voice mail messages to the phones to notify students, faculty and staff of an emergency. The internal telephone alert system began operating last spring, and Cortland is also participating in the systemwide NY Alert program. As of late August, just before classes resumed, 6,805 Cortland students had voluntarily registered their cell phone numbers with the campus NY Alert system, which was about an 80 percent response, Sidebottom said.

“We’re trying to think of everything possible. This is an ongoing effort to enhance our emergency communications,” Sidebottom said.

Training takes note of tragedy

SUNY has already had a shooting incident that ended with a critical injury to a student. In 1994, UAlbany student Ralph Tortorici held a class hostage for three hours, using a hunting knife and a rifle. Police were trying to persuade Tortorici to release the hostages and surrender when several of the students tackled him. One student was shot during the struggle. Tortorici was convicted of kidnapping and other charges and committed suicide in state prison in 1999.

“The Tortorici event was very different from what we saw in Virginia Tech,” said UAlbany Police Capt. Aran Mull. Mull was an instructor at the New York State Police training academy in 1994 and responded to the hostage crisis on the campus. At Virginia Tech — as with Columbine High School in 1994 — the killers actively sought victims instead of remaining in one place.

Although the Virginia Tech shootings did not prompt any changes in the UAlbany police department’s emergency response plans, any police department can study such tragedies and use them to evaluate their readiness training and techniques.

“It informed our training, and certainly it lent a sense of urgency throughout the community,” said Mull, a member of AFSCME Council 82.

UAlbany police didn’t make any changes specifically in response to the Virginia Tech shooting, but did begin on-campus training for various emergency scenarios for the first time last year.

Previously, they had trained at the state police academy.

Albany UUP Chapter President Candace Merbler recently completed a three-year term of co-chairing the Advisory Committee on Campus Safety at UAlbany. Merbler’s co-chair, Tom Gebhardt, a UUP member and the director of personal safety and off-campus affairs at Albany, will continue in that capacity with the committee. The campus regularly has disaster drills for the campus emergency response agencies, Merbler said.

“Our staff has learned something from each experience,” she said. “The university has consistently sought to improve emergency response plans.”

Safety starts with intervention

One very important message for students, faculty and staff to understand about campus safety is that it doesn’t begin or end with an emergency response by police or a crisis intervention team. At SUNY Stony Brook, a group of representatives of different campus agencies and student services known as the Behavior Assessment Committee seeks to help students who may pose a risk to themselves or others, before that risk becomes a reality.

The Behavior Assessment Committee at Stony Brook started in 1996. Although it is not the only such group of its kind in the SUNY system, it is one of the oldest and has been used as a model for other campuses developing similar approaches, said UUP member Anne Byrnes, director of student counseling services and a member of the Behavior Assessment Committee.

“We’re very fortunate here at Stony Brook to have this structure in place,” Byrnes said. “It’s evolved over time.”

The chancellor’s task force recommended last spring that every campus develop a behavior assessment committee.

The Virginia Tech shootings didn’t prompt any changes at SUNY Stony Brook, but they did heighten awareness of the potential for such a tragedy, Byrnes said. Faculty and staff who have worked at Stony Brook for 20 and 30 years without ever having a problem student might have once wondered why the campus needed to even safeguard against such an incident; now, they are more likely to understand why, she said.

Said Byrnes, “I think it really heightened people’s awareness, but I think we’re also stepping up our efforts to educate everyone that we all have to look out for each other.”

— Darryl McGrath