Officials at Bay State campuses pledge to look for lessons on security

University officials across Massachusetts said yesterday they will study the horrific mass shooting at Virginia Tech in coming days and weeks to see if it points to holes in campus security.

But several officials at area universities said it would be a mistake to overreact by severely restricting public access to campus es and installing metal detectors. The Virginia Tech shooting was the deadliest shooting crime in US history, and left 33 dead, including the gunman.

Such a tragedy, they said, could happen anywhere, and sealing off buildings would be a major blow to the spirit of openness and collaboration on college campuses.

"This is a campus where students and educators live and learn and work, and openness is one of its advantages," said Boston University Police Chief Thomas G. Robbins . "I don't think this calls for a wholesale change that would result in locking down the campus, because it's such an unusual event."

The Columbine high school shooting in 1999 and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, prompted wide-scale self-examination of campus security, college officials said. The latest shooting will prompt more scrutiny, and this week, security and student affairs personnel on many local campuses will meet to discuss the Virginia Tech tragedy.

Barbara O'Connor , police chief at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst , said a mass shooting is one of her worst nightmares, and that her staff will meet today to discuss various aspects of the Virginia Tech shooting -- from the root causes to police response -- to consider how prepared UMass might be.

"It's tough to be prepared for something of that magnitude," O'Connor said. "Colleges are so densely populated, it certainly would give a deranged killer more opportunity to kill more people than at a high school."

High schools generally consist of one building, while many colleges have hundreds of buildings, making it nearly impossible for everyone on a police force to know every building or every floor, she said.

Over the last five years, UMass-Amherst has installed about 450 surveillance cameras and hired 10 additional officers and about 30 student cadets, primarily to clamp down on student drinking and rowdiness. The increased surveillance caused some students to accuse the administration of creating a police state, and some said yesterday they hope the Virginia Tech shootings won't prompt more monitoring.

"I don't think anyone can really prepare for something like this because we live in a free society," said Elvis Mendez of Framingham, a junior at UMass-Amherst. "Hopefully, we won't live in a place where metal detectors are in classrooms."

Officials at many universities said they have plans in place for responding to a gunman on campus.

Robbins and his counterpart at MIT, John DiFava , both former superintendents of the Massachusetts State Police, said their officers have undergone training in how to respond to a gunman. Before Columbine, Robbins said, the tendency would have been to set up a security perimeter and call in a SWAT team. Today, he said, officers would be far more likely to react aggressively, "enter the building and neutralize the suspect" to avoid wasting precious seconds.

University campus security heads said they also have gradually added more security measures to keep out intruders and spot any kind of trouble.

University dormitories can generally be opened with electronic cards issued only to students who live on campus, or in some cases, in that particular building. At some schools, security guards or attendants guard entrances to large dormitories, and guests have to sign in.

DiFava of MIT and O'Connor of UMass-Amherst said their campuses have networks of faculty, resident assistants, and in some cases, mental health professionals to identify students at risk of committing violence. Because so many students live on campus, such individuals are more closely supervised.

James Alan Fox , professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University and an author of five books on mass murders, said universities should remain open.

"Obviously, this is a good time for campus security to be examined, . . . but it's not the time to take drastic measures to turn campuses into Army camps," Fox said. "These are rare events and tragic and sad, but it's not a reason to change our way of life on campus or off. "

Marcella Bombardieri can be reached at bombardieri @globe.com , James Vaznis at jvaznis@globe.com.