WEB EXCLUSIVE: Creating a Safer College Campus

This Web Exclusive comes from Robert J. Chartier of AlliedBarton.

Collegiate life is not what it used to be. In the past, parents were anxious about their children adapting to living life independently, making wise choices, getting a solid education, and growing up. Those concerns still exist today, but let’s add a new one: Will my child be safe?

Now, more than ever, our higher education institutions are marketing quality academics in a true learning environment with attractive extra-curricular activities and world-class sports venues. Many colleges are also stressing safety and highlighting programs they have developed to ensure the health and welfare of their campus residents. Due to the federal Clery Act, which requires schools to record and report major criminal activities on their campuses, there is also a fish bowl environment which fosters responsibility and accountability.

What are the challenges of keeping campuses safe? How can today’s administrators, campus law enforcement, and facilities services personnel rise to meet them? The answers lie in the mix of security and law enforcement personnel, technology, facilities design, and crime prevention education. There is no single solution. Let’s take a look at a few examples of what measures are in place today to keep our college campuses safe, and how we can successfully employ cost-effective measures to meet the challenges we face.

Some Challenges
Affordable Police Presence – On most college campuses, campus police maintain a law-abiding and safe environment. The challenge is creating a greater public presence on campus grounds without breaking the budget. Sure, it would be great to multiply the number of police personnel on site, but doing so is often financially prohibitive.


Student Housing Access Control – Colleges recognize the need to keep order and access in check at student residence halls. Many schools depend upon passive restraints such as door access control and/or stationary video surveillance. Some colleges staff the entrance with an individual who verifies identification and manages visitor access. In order to control costs, schools often deploy students to monitor access and activities of their fellow students at residence halls.

Technology – A wide range of technology solutions exist that include door access control systems, emergency alert phones and kiosks, video surveillance, and email and text message alerts, to name a few. These are all useful and timely tools to employ, but they are each either reactive or passive. Such solutions are only an element of an effective security program. Without personnel to monitor, deter or respond, the systems are compromised. And while part of the solution may be in employing more campus police personnel, many of the tasks, like helping residents who are locked out or responding to alarms resulting from open doors, are routine. The overwhelming costs incurred in following up with the technology alerts may preclude today’s administrators from selecting this option.


An Answer
Since most agree that an increased physical presence of well-trained security professionals may be a large part of today’s solution to the challenges college campus personnel face. This answer may be simple, reasonable, cost-effective and timely.

Outsourced Security Personnel – Increasingly, institutions are finding that one of the most cost-effective means to supplement law enforcement and technology is to employ the services of a well-trained and proven contract security firm. Pioneered in the large private urban research universities, the use of professional security officers is spreading across all locations and types of institutions as schools move to create a more visible deterrent and response capability.

Contract security companies who specialize in higher education, who train their staff on the specific challenges and reporting regulations of campus security, are the best choice. Companies with a lot of experience in this arena understand how their staff can work in conjunction with campus police and know how to create a strategy for the best possible security solution.

Consider The Following
Campus law enforcement may not need to have more police officers that are costly to train and equip. And, a smaller budget may make it difficult to retain staff. A better response is to multiply the eyes and ears on campus by using a reputable contract security provider that can supplement their efforts. The key is defining a specific role for the contract security officers who can perform many of the routine tasks (e.g., personal safety escort services, foot patrols, parking details, vehicle assists, etc.) and also supplement building safety and maintenance systems.

Selecting students to monitor and facilitate residence halls access may not be the wisest practice. Not only are there related concerns regarding liability, but also, an independent resource would be the best choice for the security-related details. Again, choosing a well-trained and experienced contract security provider to monitor and patrol student residence halls maintains a higher degree of safety, security and impartiality, without incurring the heavy costs associated with employing law enforcement personnel or additional residence hall staff.

Many of today’s public and private higher educational institutions are recognizing the benefits associated with creating hybrid solutions to the design of their physical security programs. In their search for a solution to their safety and security-budget challenges, facilities managers, administrative personnel, and campus law enforcement departments are partnering with proven contract security providers. College administrators, campus police, professors, students and their parents agree that a comprehensive and cost-effective solution is the best remedy to today’s safety challenges on college campuses.

Chartier (Bob.Chartier@alliedbarton.com) is a vice president for AlliedBarton Security Services, www.alliedbarton.com, which provides security services for many of the country’s leading colleges and universities.

Experts Highlight Security Trends for Hospitals, Offices & Schools at Symposium

“About 10 percent or more of U.S. healthcare workers are assaulted each year,” said Tony W. York, CPP, CHPA, president, International Association for Healthcare Security & Safety (IAHSS) to security professionals attending the “Serious About Security—2008 Symposium” at the Intercontinental Hotel Conference Center—Cleveland Clinic Campus, Cleveland.

Sponsored by turnkey access control provider, Matrix Systems of Dayton, OH, the recent symposium also featured security expert presentations from Texas A & M University (TAMU), College Station, TX; medical imaging manufacturer, Carestream Health of Rochester, NY; and Security Risk Management Consultants of Columbus, OH. The symposium also featured a tour of the access control and security system command center controlling/monitoring the 1.5-square-mile Cleveland Clinic’s campus, home to the largest heart hospital in the US.

York, who is also senior vice president-security at Hospital Shared Services, bases his assaults estimate on a recent meeting with officials from the National Health Services (NHS), the United Kingdom’s publicly-funded healthcare system. “We don’t have a national incident reporting system here, but the NHS reports 55,000 assaults on UK healthcare workers last year and they suspect at least another 55,000 incidents weren’t reported,” said York during his “Security Design Considerations for the Healthcare Market” presentation. “That’s 110,000 assaults in a healthcare system with only 1.3 million employees.”

The “drying up” of US behavioral healthcare funding, which is illustrated by Denver’s recent closings of five primary mental healthcare facilities, according to York, is another reason for increased assaults on healthcare workers nationwide. With the decrease of behavioral care services, mental patients are flooding emergency departments and assaults are escalating.

York also cited another shocking emergency department statistic that must be addressed with security and access control. A four-year study conducted by the Henry Ford Medical Center in Detroit, reported that four percent of persons arriving at the emergency department carry weapons.

As an advocate of separating the walk-in/reception area from triage, treatment areas, and patient quiet/safe rooms, York urged the healthcare security people in attendance to design and retrofit emergency rooms with access control designs that protect hospital employees, but don’t inhibit the swiftness of ingress that care specialists need in emergencies.

Industrial Security on a Global Basis
Another speaker, Thomas J. Rohr, CPP, director of Worldwide Corporate Security, at Carestream Health, a recent $2.5 billion medical imaging equipment manufacturer sell-off from Kodak, urged security professionals to continue searching for new ways to challenge their existing access control systems. Rohr, who presented “Worldwide Corporate Security for Your Company,” encourages his building managers at facilities in seven countries to demand new and challenging applications for Carestream’s global security operation. “If your security needs aren’t increasing everyday, there’s something wrong,” said Rohr, “because there’s always something new, something better, or something more you can do with your existing system to increase security and usability.”

Rohr’s four-person staff solves most challenges with in-house security personnel or with assistance from Matrix Systems’ customer service. “Tell me you want contractors timed into the system and reported to the human resources systems,” said Rohr reading a list of past requests from facility managers that his department successfully implemented. “Tell me you want cashless vending services via ID badges. Tell me you want a touch-less access control system for vehicles entering the facility’s garage, because between our staff and Matrix customer service, we can find a way to make it happen.”

Cleveland Clinic’s New State-of-the-Art Security Command Center
Some attendees were also treated to a profile and tour of the Cleveland Clinic’s new state-of-the-art security command center, which was designed by presenter and guide, Martin Epstein, manager, Technical Operations-Protective Services, at the Cleveland Clinic. As a proponent of security managers taking a lead role in new construction projects Epstein, a 30-year veteran of Cleveland Clinic, said, “You have to get involved in every construction project, because only you (security professionals) know where to position access control card readers to create the traffic patterns that will enhance your facility’s security objective."

The 3,000-square-foot command center features eight workstations in full view of a 32 monitor video wall allowing Epstein, his supervisors, and security watch employees 24/7 views of Cleveland Clinic’s strategic areas. The center has several banks of digital video recorders and its own dedicated uninterrupted power supply (UPS) and generator.

Cleveland Clinic’s adjacent emergency management command center room accommodates 12 people with their own seating, telephone, internet and power connections, plus three plasma monitors, room cameras, and feeds to Cleveland Clinic’s administration offices. The room also has electronics for Ohio’s new Multi-Agency Radio Communications System (MARCS), an 800-megahertz, voice and data network for the Ohio highway patrol and other health, safety, and emergency agencies.

Cleveland Clinic’s Matrix Systems access control system is playing a major part in the hospital’s expansion. By 2009 the hospital will have expanded to 2,500 magnetic locks for entries, 1,700 ID card readers, 600 CCTV cameras with DVR capabilities, and 6,000 alarm points that monitor panic and intrusion alarms to incubators, laboratories, freezers, and many other critical areas that all culminate at Matrix’s Frontier software workstations.

Security During University Alerts
In light of recent mass shootings on university campuses, Walt Magnussen, TAMU’s director of University Telecommunications and associate director of the school’s Internet2 Technology Evaluation Center (ITEC), said more parents of prospective students are investigating the security of college campuses before enrolling. TAMU’s response has been a cutting-edge emergency management update that features text messaging. “They (students) invented it, use it, and have told us (older generation) that’s how they want to be communicated with,” said Magnussen.

Consequently, 32,000 of 47,000 TAMU students have signed up for text messaging alerts in the event of a campus emergency. Since emergency tests have demonstrated that networks can’t handle 32,000 simultaneous cell phone text messages, TAMU is devising methods of staggering the transmission.

TAMU is also using reverse 911 technology where cell phones within an 800-yard perimeter of an incident are contacted first. The Emergency Alert System (EAS) will also be used for radio and TV alerts. Computer screen pop-up messages, voice over internet protocol (VoIP) blasts, and other technologies are being considered and implemented.

Holistic Approaches to Security Management
Security experts in attendance were also instructed on “Implementing a Holistic Security Program Management Model: Planning for Your Organization’s Future,” presented by Elliot A. Boxerbaum, CPP, CSC, president of Security Risk Management Consultants, Inc.

A 25-year law enforcement veteran, Boxerbaum urged the audience of security professionals to establish a five to seven year security capital improvement plans with their CEO’s. “If you can sell your CEO and board of directors on your seven year vision for security and get them to sign off on it, you can always count on upgrading your system every year,” said Boxerbaum. “However if your department is locked into the annual budget cycle where you’re begging for money to make some unsuspected improvement every year, you’ll have a lot of extra work ahead of you.”