An Inch and a Mile

One of the things that I worry will be the result of today's Virginia Tech shootings (besides copy-cat shootings at other schools) will be a new round of freaked-out parents and legislators proposing new security precautions at schools--in the case universities. The Columbine shooting 8 years ago transformed many schools into virtual prisons; I don't want to see the same thing happen to colleges and universities.

One reason is because new security steps would diminish the openness of colleges--which is one of their greatest strengths. Setting up security checkpoints around a campus would create an obstacle that should not exist between the public and the resources of higher education. Secondly, new precautions would be ineffective. Most college campuses are large, sprawling places with multiple points of entry. Building fences and gates would be costly and probably wouldn't work anyway, since the perpetrators of these crimes are often students themselves--people who are already on campus. Third, such precautions would be unnecessary. There may be a few copy-cat shootings in the next few months, but shootings such as today's shooting are so rare, so extraordinary, that any sort of precaution taken by any school would be an over-reaction.

In this case, no new policies of any sort would be the best policy to adopt.