Illinois Universities Talk about Campus Security
Can working together help colleges and universities prevent campus shootings? That’s what a number of colleges and universities in central Illinois are hoping as they work together to do a better job of organizing emergency response plans.

According to an article in Bloomington, Illinois’ The Pantagraph, Illinois State University in Normal, which created its own Behavioral Intervention Team last summer, hosted a regional seminar last week for its student affairs staff, crisis responders and university police. The National Center for Higher Education Risk Management’s Behavior Intervention and Threat Assessment Institute sent experts to lead sessions at the two-day event.

Some ISU administrators had been meeting informally about campus security and related topics for several years – long before the shootings on Feb. 4 at Northern Illinois University and last year at Virginia Tech, Brent Paterson, ISU student affairs associate vice president, told the paper.

Paterson said the Virginia Tech incident led to the creation last summer of ISU's Behavioral Intervention Team, which works to recognize unhealthy or dangerous behavior on the Normal campus. The goal is to help students with such problems before a crisis develops while remaining true to privacy and confidentiality rules.

“One part was that we wanted to help students who are acting out in different ways connect to student resources,” he told the paper. The team, including representatives from dorm life, academics, counseling, mental health and police, also produces a regular update for key personnel about “students on our radar,” he said.