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Special Supplement: Securing the Campus
A Multi-Pronged Plan
7/1/2007
As schools adopt new and varied technologies to protect the campus community, the need to look at security tools in terms of a comprehensive, layered, and integrated strategy, becomes clear.
IT’S ALMOST MIDNIGHT, and the moon’s barely a sliver. A young woman has just seen a movie with some friends, and she’s now trekking back to her dorm across the deserted campus. She’s actually enjoying the solitude until she spies a figure coming toward her. As he approaches, she tries to appear calm and unconcerned. The two pass, but within a minute the young woman hears footsteps behind her. Could the stranger have turned to follow her?
These days, on university campuses across the US, there are many ways this female student—or any campus member or visitor—might be protected in such a situation:
- If Campus Security officials are made aware of some danger— e.g., an intruder on campus—they can alert the student via a text or voice message on her cell phone.
- Even if she hadn’t been warned, the young woman could use a single button on her cell phone to contact Campus Security officers, and they would zero in on her location.
- Even if she couldn’t get to her phone, she could activate a special time-sensitive alert when she left her friends, and an alarm would be triggered after a predetermined time, indicating that she had not arrived at her destination.
- Even if the young woman didn’t own or have a cell phone on her person, “intelligent” surveillance would note the non-normative behavior of two individuals approaching each other (with one changing direction in a suspicious manner), thus signaling an alert.
- When the young woman arrived at her dorm, followed or not, she would spend no precious time fumbling with a key; she would press her thumb on a pad at the door and enter immediately.
SAFETY (AND VIDEO) TAKE OFF
James Black is senior security consultant for TRC Security. His firm implements campuswide security plans nationwide and particularly in California where, in the last five years, as a result of statewide bond measures, “there has been a significant shift toward funding for security,” says Black. Yet, even with those funds now more readily available, bells-and-whistles technology isn’t necessarily the order of the day. Black and his colleagues help campuses integrate “no-tech, low-tech, and high-tech” solutions to security needs, he explains, adding that whatiffing and planning are key. They ask questions such as, “Who responds first to an emergency?” “What happens when they do that?” “Which cameras are called up when?” and “Who is best able to install the equipment?”
Although “there is no one set of solutions that works for every campus,” says Black, he acknowledges that one type of security installation has really taken off: “There has been an explosion in the use of video surveillance and video analytics,” he discloses.
Recommended Reading
- 2008 Campus Technology Innovators: Enhanced Learning/ Assessment
- 2008 Campus Technology Innovators: High-Performance Computing
- 2008 Campus Technology Innovators: Interactive, Remote Learning
- 2008 Campus Technology Innovators: Mobile Learning
- 2008 Campus Technology Innovators: Network Security
- 2008 Campus Technology Innovators: Social Networking for Admissions
