Parents accompanying their college-bound children on tours these days are not just asking about academic rigors and the campus social life.
They want to know if the college has a lockdown plan in the event of a shooting.
"After Virginia Tech, it definitely increased," said Jessica Kornfeld, 22, a mechanical engineering student from Long Island who works in the admissions office at Northeastern University. "I didn't have any questions like that when I looked at schools."
Last April's shooting at Virginia Tech spurred universities across the country to reexamine their policies for securing a campus and for swiftly notifying students and faculty of an emergency. Now, after Thursday's shooting in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University, local university officials who have bought and tested new emergency alert systems are wondering whether anything else could be done to avert such violence on campus.
"I think we all realize the true expanse of the tragedy," said Boston University Police Chief Tom Robbins. "Here at BU, we look at everything we can to prevent a tragedy. But campuses, as we all know, remain an open environment."
The Virginia Tech shootings - which left 33 dead, including the gunman - galvanized universities to improve their communications systems. The Virginia college was criticized for failing to shut down immediately after the first two victims were discovered in a dormitory and for not notifying students before the shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, found his other victims in a classroom building.
Since then, Boston police have trained security teams at many area colleges to deal with a shooter on campus. Colleges including Boston University, Tufts, Brandeis, and Northeastern have adopted emergency notification systems that send text messages to students' cellphones, e-mail to their computers, and voice messages to their phones.
Some are also using the systems for lesser crises. Northeastern students - and their parents - recently got 5:30 a.m. calls with the news flash that classes were canceled due to snow.
"This sort of intense preparation needs to be done, and it's something we've taken very seriously here," said Dennis Nealon, a spokesman for Brandeis University. "That's the lesson again. This does happen. It happens all too frequently these days."
After the Virginia Tech shootings, an eight-member panel deliberated over whether campus police at Brandeis should start to carry guns. The recommendation was an unequivocal yes, and the roughly 20 police officers on the 4,100-student campus in Waltham are to be armed by summer.
Other states are going even further. USA Today reported that a push is on in a dozen states to allow students and faculty to carry concealed weapons on campuses, under the theory that only someone who is armed can stop a shooter.
But some specialists and some students say that no amount of preparation can provide ultimate protection from violence.
"If someone wants to do something, it can happen," said Kelsey Holmes, 18, a native of the Philadelphia area who had considered attending Virginia Tech before deciding on Northeastern.
Lockdowns are nearly impossible on public campuses and might not even be useful, since only two campus shooters have ever struck more than one building, said James Alan Fox, a Northeastern University professor of criminal justice. Metal detectors are impractical for college students roaming lecture halls and classrooms with only minutes between classes. And for all the legitimate fear surrounding school shootings, campus killings remain statistically rare.
"I see it as a big wave of fear and concern," said Fox, an author of books on mass murder. "But there hasn't been a trend upward. It's important that we respond calmly and not irrationally."
In addition to the Northern Illinois shootings there have been several other college campus shootings over the past six months. Two students were shot by a female student in a class at Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge last week, and two doctoral students were shot in a home invasion on the campus of Louisiana State University in December. Last September, one of two students died after being shot in a Delaware State University dining hall.
Fox is working with Applied Risk Management of Stoneham on a contract for the state Board of Higher Education to study the steps universities are taking against campus violence and to develop procedures for state universities in Massachusetts.
Among his recommendations is pouring more resources into student health services that could help all students, without impinging upon the rights of any.
"It may not resolve the problem of campus shootings, but it could reduce campus suicides," he said.
Stephanie Ebbert can be reached at ebbert@globe.com.
