Homeland Security Focus Areas

University Security 

$44 million dorm will be first for SUNO students, faculty

by John Pope, The Times-Picayune

Monday June 23, 2008, 9:26 PM

A 19-building, $44 million residential complex will rise next to the Lake Pontchartrain levee in what will be the biggest construction project in Southern University at New Orleans' 49-year history.

The structures, providing a total of 227,000 square feet of housing for students and faculty, will be directly behind the tract where SUNO has operated in trailers since Hurricane Katrina and ensuing floodwaters savaged its campus in August 2005.

The project, designed to resemble an apartment complex, will be the first housing SUNO has ever offered, Chancellor Victor Ukpolo said.

"It's exciting," he said. "It opens the door to the world to our academic programs."

SUNO is Louisiana's last state-run four-year college to offer housing, Ukpolo said.

"We've received calls from around the world from students who are interested in coming to participate and help us recover the city," he said, "but we could not welcome them because we could not provide housing."

The housing will be the first of three projects SUNO plans for what it calls the Lake Campus, said Gerald Williams, vice chancellor for administration and finance.

Even though SUNO officials have made no secret of their eagerness to move back to their home on the northwest edge of the Pontchartrain Park subdivision, Williams said SUNO is developing the site for two reasons: It's higher than the main campus and, at 38 acres, it's more than twice as big as SUNO's 17-acre site.

Planned for the Lake Campus are a new home for the School of Social Work and a $3 million, 10,000-square-foot information-technology center that will house the mainframe for SUNO's computer system, as well as its e-learning center and its audio-visual department.

Construction of the residential complex is scheduled to begin next month, and the buildings will open in two stages. The first phase, with space for about 400 people, is expected to be complete by the fall of 2009. The rest, which will house about 300 people, is expected to be ready a year later, SUNO spokesman Eddie Francis said.

The initiative is underwritten by a $44 million loan from the federal Education Department's capital financing program for historically black colleges and universities, Francis said.

The units, which will be of varying sizes totaling 227,000 square feet, will be open to students and faculty, including their families, but students and professors will be housed in separate buildings, Ukpolo said.

These buildings "will change the face of SUNO forever," student-body President Aaron DeGruy said. "We're transitioning into a residential university. We realize it's a big step, and we're happy to be part of it."

Richard Brown, of the Baton Rouge firm Bani, Carville & Brown, is the lead architect. He will be working with Verges Rome Architects of New Orleans.

Planning for the project has been under way since September 2006, Ukpolo said.

"The reason we waited this long for groundbreaking is that I wanted to be sure we had all our ducks in a row," he said. "I want work to commence almost immediately."

While SUNO officials have been making plans for that land, they also have been working to return to the main campus, which is about a half-mile south of the Lake Campus.

Ukpolo expects that students and faculty will be able to occupy eight of the 11 buildings on that campus by Aug. 18, when faculty orientation will kick off the fall semester.

However, everyone will be restricted to the upper floors "for months," Ukpolo said, because repairs are continuing on the heavily damaged first floors of every building.

Asbestos remediation will keep the library and Education Building from being ready on Aug. 18, he said, and the Central Plant was so heavily damaged that it will have to be rebuilt.

Because the Central Plant provided power for the entire campus, each building will have temporary units for air conditioning, heat and electricity, Ukpolo said.

John Pope can be reached at jpope@timespicayune.com or at 504.826.3317.

The University Daily Kansan

A reporter's account of the KSU tornado aftermath

Kansan reporter Christine D’Amico traveled to Manhattan to witness the destruction the tornado caused and the clean up that ensued.

By Christine D'Amico (Contact)

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Students described it as a typical tornado. First came the rain, followed by the hail. After a small calm it hit: an F4 tornado that would scare the campus of Kansas State University.

A Kansan photographer and I drove into Manhattan two days after the tornado, which covered an area of five miles, ripping through the college town last Thursday.

Clean-up crews had been working tirelessly since the incident, cleaning up blown over trees and debris. However, new student orientation was in full swing, as if the $20 million dollars of damage to campus had not phased them.

Piles of boards and broken doors pile up in yards in the Miller Ranch neighborhood Friday, June 13. Most all homes in the community recieved damages from the tornado that hit Manhattan, but no major injuries were reported

The engineering hall was one of the first buildings hit on campus. Yellow tape still trimmed the building. Dane Sylvester was one of the volunteers aiding with the clean-up.

“The main damage was to the atrium,” Sylvester said. “There was a lot of glass and water from the tornado.”

Dick Hayter, associate dean of external affairs, showed us around the building and we saw the clean-up that started the night of the bad weather.

“We got in here an hour later and you could see through the roof,” Hayter said.

During a tour from the roof of the building, he pointed out other buildings on campus affected by the storm. In what looked to be a perfectly diagonal line through town, the path of the tornado hit a fraternity house, the engineering building, a nuclear reactor, green houses and a wind erosion lab, along with countless cars and trees in its path.

Our next stop was the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house, whose roof still lay across the street. Outside a group of fraternity members sat and watched as construction crews reconstructed their roof.

Jared Brunkow, senior vice president of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, was in the house when the storm hit. After watching the weather reports on the news of the invasive storm, Brunkow and other fraternity members sought shelter at the nearby engineering building’s loading dock. Along with five other people, the Greek members watched the tornado rip through their home and move onto the engineering building.

“There was green lightening and then a calm,” Brunkow said.

While hiding in safety, Brunkow watched a car crash into the bay doors of the engineering building.

After surviving the initial tornado, all the members started to clean up the surrounding area. An apartment building located across the street from the fraternity house also lost its roof. Brunkow went to help where needed. The fraternity brothers assisted one couple in particular, newlyweds who barely had time to recoup from their honeymoon.

“We were cleaning up their stuff and found all of these bows and wrapping paper in all the debris,” Brunkow said.

The cost of the damage to their fraternity house is still undetermined. Most of the ruined material included carpets, mattresses and bedding, but because of the brick construction, the foundation of their house remained intact.

“Lots of other chapters and alumni are coming to help us out,” Brunkow said.

The tight-knit fraternity was expecting fellow members from a Wichita chapter the next day further clean up their house.

Aubree Casper, sophomore opinion editor at Kansas State’s Collegian, had been covering the story round the clock.

Casper and fellow reporters told us of Miller Ranch, a residential neighborhood that had been hit hard.

As we drove up the ridge that entered the neighborhood, we saw the same debris that was sprinkled throughout Manhattan. But a sharp turn down a hill opened us up to the devastation. At one time properties in this area topped $1 million, but now the houses were reduced to sheets of concrete. Red Cross tents littered the streets and families stood in a mess of their former homes.

It was clear that by the time we had gotten there the shock was gone. Families sat in the frames of their houses at kitchen islands or other remaining parts, prepping themselves for another round of clean-up. Spray painted “X”s adorned homes that were no longer habitable. Unfortunately the further we drove into the community the more “X”s we saw.

It was an unexplainable sight, one that no words will do justice. It was the sight of children carrying orange buckets, lending a hand in the clean-up process. It was a sight of realization that the homes where families were raised were now gone. It was a sight of a community banded together to rebuild.

A special thanks to Aubree Casper and the Kansas State Collegian staff for their assistance in our reporting efforts.

— Edited by Matt Hirschfeld

June 13, 2008

University of Iowa to close portions of campus

Tyler O'Neil
Iowa City Press-Citizen

The University of Iowa will be closing an eighth of campus starting at 5 p.m. today because of rising floodwaters with more buildings to follow Saturday, UI officials announced Thursday.

Buildings to be closed today include Art Building West, Art Building East, Art Museum, Hancher Auditorium, Iowa Advanced Technology Laboratory, North Hall, Stanley Hydraulics, Theater Building, Voxman/Capp Hall and the Iowa Memorial Union.

Buildings to be closed Saturday include the Adler Journalism & Mass Communication Building, Becker Communications Building, English-Philosophy building, Main Library, Hydraulics East Annex, Hydraulics Model Annex and Cambus Maintenance Facility.

All faculty and staff in those buildings should be prepared to remove all necessary materials either out of the building or to a higher level by 5 p.m. on their respective days.

Lola Lopes, UI interim provost, said UI athletic and academic camps will be canceled for next week because of the flooding. She said summer classes in affected buildings will be moved to other locations but should continue as planned.

"I would try very hard not to simply cancel classes because some students are relying on summer classes to graduate," Lopes said.

UI has enlisted the help of the Iowa National Guard as well as several outside contractors to help erect barriers to protect campus buildings.

Don Guckert, associate vice president of UI facilities management, said UI has purchased numerous collapsible containers often used by the military as barriers or dykes. The containers can be filled with rock and used in areas that require a more robust barrier. The National Guard has lent UI assistance setting them up.

UI also is using 5,000-pound concert jersey barriers for portions of the dyke system. Roger Maxwell of Wieser Precast said he has delivered between 500 and 600 of the barriers to locations on both sides of the river.

Guckert said UI has built about a mile's worth of levees to protect not only UI buildings but also the underground utilities that supply power and steam to a majority of campus.

"If we were to have a breach in the dyke system that we are building, then the risk increases dramatically (that UI would lose power)," Guckert said.

Guckert remains optimistic that the system will provide enough protection.

"If we didn't think we could do it, we wouldn't be concentrating our efforts on doing it," Guckert said. "Everyone out there thinks it can be done."

Guckert also said in a news conference that the project would be impossible without volunteer support.

Bill Nelson, director of UI student life, has been coordinating the sandbagging effort outside the IMU. He said volunteers around campus have been filling bags for several days, sometimes working into the early morning hours.

"That is what a conscientious community is all about," Nelson said. "They will do anything to keep it alive."

The Daily Illini

Campus security act passes state Senate committee

Task force hopes colleges will prepare, review threat response plans

By: Renee Chacko

Posted: 5/12/08

By As part of a set of recommendations following the shootings at Virginia Tech University and Northern Illinois University, the Campus Security Enhancement Act was approved by the Senate Higher Education Committee last week. In an attempt to help make campuses across Illinois safer, the act requires colleges and universities to develop and exercise emergency response and violence prevention programs.

The act awaits full Senate approval, and if passed would require the University administration and Campus Emergency Planning officials to review their plans annually.

"As new threats emerge, campuses and universities will need to pay attention to these issues. The hope is that campuses will review these plans at least on an annual basis and that they will be ready as different threats come up," said Mike Chamness, chairman of the Illinois Terrorism Task Force.

Chamness also sits on the response committee of the Campus Security Task Force established under Gov. Rod Blagojevich in April 2007 to develop and implement policies to enhance the response to and recovery from major public safety incidents at higher education institutions in Illinois. Based off the task force's recommendations, part of the Senate bill requires campuses to develop and exercise an all-hazards emergency response plan.

"The first step is for colleges and universities to identify the risks unique to their campuses. Plans developed by university officials would in essence help to prevent, mitigate and respond to these specific risks," Chamness said.

The University has emergency text messaging and blast e-mail technology, and its emergency response plans are highly sophisticated, Chamness said, and would probably serve as a model for other campuses across Illinois.

The development of violence prevention programs is also part of the task force's recommendations included in the bill. Chamness said violence prevention consists of reporting potentially threatening behavior to a campus violence prevention committee. The bill allows each college or university to decide who should be a part of its committee, with the possibility of including mental health professionals. The violence prevention program is also required to create a campus threat assessment team that would inform students on what constitutes potentially threatening behavior and to whom they should report this behavior. Both the committee and the threat assessment team would help evaluate the reports and take appropriate actions such as expulsions or prescribing proper mental health care.

The bill could potentially change the way student leaders, such as resident advisors, train to secure the safety of their residents. Currently, resident advisors are trained to respond to emergencies such as tornados and fires, but also on how to prevent violence by getting to know their residents on an individual level and recognizing odd behavior.

"I think the additional professional training would be really helpful on the job," said Peter Pascua, Sherman Hall resident advisor and graduate student. "It's a lot to have this responsibility fall upon your shoulders. The additional emergency planning and exercise would help keep people aware of the problems and give people time to transition into the plan."

Although the bill does not specify response or prevention plans, the hope is that university officials will develop campus-specific plans.

"We fully understand that we can't prescribe the same prevention and response plans for all campuses," Chamness said. "Each campus is different in the risks they face as well as the resources available. It would be up to the administration to decide what needs to be done and how exactly to balance the safety of students with privacy issues."

The task force recommended a $25 million Campus Security Enhancement Grant program to help campuses in need of technology receive the aid to create proper response systems. Funding for this initiative is included in the governor's capital bill.

In case of a campus shooting or an all-hazards emergency, campuses would need to know whom to contact from the surrounding community. In order to provide administrators with this professional expertise, state and local emergency management officials will assist administrators with the development of these plans, as well as with training and exercises related to their execution.

"The most useful part of the act is that can help colleges and universities exercise emergency response plans to help them figure out what doesn't work on their campus so that they can refine their strategies," Chamness said.

'4/14' threats close 3 colleges in Midwest

Tuesday,  April 15, 2008 3:12 AM

By Tara Burghart

ASSOCIATED PRESS

CHICAGO -- A message scrawled in a university bathroom -- "Be prepared to die on 4/14" -- left not just the college's campus empty yesterday, but also those of two adjoining high schools and a pair of nearby elementary schools.

After the precautions were taken at St. Xavier University on the city's southwest side, Malcolm X College evacuated students and canceled daytime classes yesterday after a similar threat was found in a bathroom at the campus west of downtown. And Michigan's Oakland University was closed yesterday because of threatening graffiti mentioning April 14.

The closings, two days before the one-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech killings and two months after the deadly rampage at Northern Illinois University, illustrate the challenge such threats pose to school administrators, who have to decide just how seriously to take them.

"I can see why they're doing it for the safety of the kids. But I see it as over the top," said Lynn Ruggiero, whose daughter is a freshman at one of the high schools that closed yesterday.

Ruggiero said she figures whoever wrote the threat "is getting a certain satisfaction" from putting thousands of Chicago students out of class. Still, she knows school officials have a hard time pleasing everyone.

"If they hadn't closed, people would have said, 'How come you didn't?'  "

St. Xavier and Malcolm X are located about 15 miles apart, and despite the fact that the threats had similar wording, there was no indication they were related, Chicago police spokeswoman Monique Bond said.

Although St. Xavier decided Friday to close until further notice, classes at Malcolm X resumed late yesterday afternoon after bomb-sniffing dogs swept the campus.

Oakland University, an 18,000-student state school about 20 miles north of Detroit, planned to resume classes today. The graffiti that prompted its shutdown also made a reference to "4/14" but didn't specify a type or time of an attack, university spokesman Ted Montgomery said.

NYTimes.com

April 1, 2008 

Hamas and Fatah Supporters Clash at Gaza University

By TAGHREED EL-KHODARY

GAZA — Hamas police and supporters on Monday beat a number of professors and students of Al Azhar University, the last bastion of Fatah in Gaza, wounding several, witnesses said. Hamas denied it had acted improperly and said the police restored order.  The students and staff were protesting a rally that Hamas insisted on holding inside the university campus in memory of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder of the militant Islamic group who was killed in an Israeli air strike in March 2004.

Al Azhar University has continued to operate, despite having been raided five times since Hamas routed rival Fatah forces and took control of Gaza last June.

Before dawn on Monday, Hamas activists entered the compound and set up equipment for the rally, hanging pictures of Hamas leaders and Hamas flags. When members of the academic staff protested outside, Hamas police beat them with clubs, said Ayman Shaheen, a professor of political science. Mr. Shaheen said he was hit twice.

“All they know is the language of force,” Mr. Shaheen said of Hamas. “We try to talk to them but they don’t listen.”

A number of female students were then attacked at the rally by participants who mostly came from outside, many armed with clubs, witnesses said. Tahrir Abu Latifa, 19, a student of commerce, was taken to Gaza’s main Al Shifa Hospital unconscious but was able to leave a few hours later.

“I was removing a poster that said ‘Hamas forces will win over Al Azhar,’” she said, “then men surrounded me and hit me on my head and all over my body.”

Rana Redwan, a student of psychology, said she received a blow to the head after she entered the rally and a speaker on the podium called her “impure.” Witnesses said they saw her tearing a Hamas flag.

Another woman, Riham Abu Arrus, was struck in the leg with an ax, according to friends who accompanied her to hospital. Ms. Abu Arrus was first taken to Gaza’s main Al Shifa hospital, which is now under Hamas control, but was refused immediate treatment, the friends said. Most of the wounded were treated at the private Ahli Arab Hospital.

The women who were wounded were all wearing colorful headscarves, in deference to Islamic rules of modesty, but not the more conservative uniform worn by female students at the nearby Islamic University that is run by Hamas.

Ehab al-Ghsein, a spokesman for the Hamas-run Interior Ministry in Gaza, said the police intervened when the rally threatened to become unruly. “The issue is between the administration of the university and the Islamic bloc,” he said, referring to a small group of Al Azhar students who support Hamas.

Sharif Abu Shamala, 24, who heads the university’s Islamic bloc, said that the women had provoked the audience by shredding a Hamas flag. In such cases “it is hard to control what happens,” he said.

University system to seek more money for campus safety

Associated Press - March 27, 2008 4:54 PM ET

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - The state's university board says Florida should spend nearly $20 million extra to make sure campuses are safe from shooters like those that struck at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois.

The university system's Board of Governors voted Thursday to increase the university system's budget request to the Legislature by $18 million for a variety of safety-related expenses.

Among those are enhancements of warning systems that alert students to campus dangers, such as text messaging systems or sirens, and money to hire emergency managers for some universities.

If the money were allocated by the Legislature, some of it would also go for additional campus police officers and new equipment for them, like body armor.

chicagotribune.com

Keep scientists safe

Universities must address violence that threatens biomedical research

By Jeffrey Kordower

March 25, 2008

By Jeffrey Kordower

Black-masked attackers disrupting a child's birthday party. A firebomb left on a doorstep. In the last six months, biomedical researchers have faced these terrifying attacks and more, with shadowy animal rights groups proudly claiming responsibility.

Despite being highly regulated, peer-reviewed, crucial to public health and legal, vital research is increasingly under violent attack by activists using illegal means. It is time for the science, academic and health communities to say "enough" and do something about it. No researcher should experience the trauma of this kind of attack alone, or shoulder the responsibility of trying to address it without support.

Overall, members of the Society for Neuroscience, whose Committee on Animals in Research that I chair, reported more incidents involving harassment or violence in the first six months of 2007 than from 1999 through 2003. Not only have these attacks become more frequent, they have become more violent. The painting of glass-eating acid onto a researcher's home, home bombings, attempted home invasion, attempted car bombings and the flooding of a researcher's home have caused thousands of dollars in damage.

This trend will continue unabated unless research institutions, governments, national funding agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health, and the science community unite to defend responsible biomedical research and implement policies to address these threats. With reasonable legal discourse descending to illegal violence and threat, universities can no longer afford to ignore actions that impose danger to their faculty. By taking steps to prepare, pre-empt and respond effectively to anti-research activists, they can support the progress of scientific research, as well as the health and economic well-being of the nation.

Funding agencies, like the National Institutes of Health, are making important statements, but they should be encouraged to take an even stronger role in expecting universities to protect NIH-funded researchers.

Unfortunately, these incidents do not just scare their targets.

One of our members was forced to give up his research out of fear for the safety of his family. Not only did we lose a talented and dedicated scientist in the neuroscience field, but also the potential breakthroughs his research could have brought to people seeking better treatments for vision loss. As someone who conducts research, including using animal models, I and legions of researchers empathized deeply with the personally and professionally demoralizing choice this researcher was forced to make—it is far too understandable for those of us who seek to balance our passion for research, our commitment to identify possible treatments and our obligations to the safety and well-being of our families and colleagues.

The responsible use of animals in research has been vital for progress and insights that are improving life and offering real hope to millions of people worldwide suffering from neurological and psychiatric disorders. These include Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases; traumatic brain injury; vision or hearing loss; developmental disability; depression and addiction; and numerous others. With more than $20 billion in NIH-funded research at more than 3,400 institutions nationwide, the United States faces substantial economic consequences due to lost research, and more significantly, faces a loss in critical health advances. Without a safe and secure environment to perform this research, we risk missing out on these discoveries.

Once all researchers feel safe in pursuing their research, then we all truly do win.

Jeffrey Kordower is a neurological sciences professor at Rush University and chair of the Committee on Animals in Research of the Society of Neuroscience.

Okla. House Passes Campus Gun Bill

By TIM TALLEY

Associated Press Writer

9:23 PM CDT, March 13, 2008

OKLAHOMA CITY

The state House agreed Thursday to allow people with specialized firearms training, such as military personnel, to carry concealed weapons on the state's college campuses, despite opponents who said it made no sense following shootings at schools across the country.

The measure was approved 65-36, and now heads to the state Senate for a vote.

Introduced by Rep. Jason Murphey, R-Guthrie, the law would authorize active-duty military and National Guard and reserve personnel, honorably discharged veterans and others with firearms training certified by the Council on Law Enforcement Education who hold a state concealed weapons license to carry guns on college and university campuses.

The legislation is more narrow than Murphey's original proposal, which would have allowed anyone at least 21 years old with concealed handgun carrying rights to carry weapons on campus. That version was similar to a Utah law.

"This has to be the craziest thing I have ever seen," said Rep. Ray McCarter, D-Marlow, one of several lawmakers who said the measure is opposed by college administrators.

Supporters argued that the measure would make college campuses safer by putting guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens.

Rep. Colby Schwartz, R-Yukon, said someone with a concealed weapon might be the only person in a classroom who can protect himself and others from an attacking gunman.

"When seconds matter the police are just minutes away," said Rep. Rex Duncan, R-Sand Springs.

House members also approved a measure that lowers the age to 18 from 21 of active-duty military, National Guard and reserve personnel as well as veterans who can be licensed to carry a concealed weapon.

Murphey said his bill was a "commonsense step" to expand Oklahoma's concealed weapons law to combat campus violence.

"The concealed carry law is about 12 years old. It's worked out very well," Murphey said. He said more than 60,000 Oklahomans are licensed to carry concealed weapons and there has been no widespread gun violence in the state, which opponents had warned of.

Murphey's bill would require people authorized to carry a concealed handgun to provide written notice to the university or college president prior to bringing a gun on campus. It would not limit a university's ability to restrict concealed weapons from access-controlled areas where people are subject to security checks.

The Washington Times

Article published Feb 15, 2008

Shooter kills five at Illinois College

February 15, 2008

By Caryn Rousseau and Deanna Belland - DEKALB, Ill. (AP)— A former student dressed in black opened fire with a shotgun and two handguns from the stage of a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University yesterday, killing five students and injuring 16 others before committing suicide, authorities said.

It was the fifth school shooting within a week and the second at a college campus since the April massacre at Virginia Tech, in which 32 students and faculty were killed.

The gunman fatally shot four women and a man in a "brief, rapid-fire assault" that sent terrified students running for cover, university President John Peters said. Four died at the scene, including the gunman, and the other two died at a hospital, he said. Two victims were in critical condition.

Investigators did not know what led the gunman, a former NIU graduate student in sociology, to spray bullets at the geology class instructor and dozens of students in the large hall about 3 p.m.

"I kept thinking, 'Oh God, he's going to shoot me. Oh God, I'm dead. I'm dead. I'm dead,' " said Desiree Smith, a senior journalism major who dropped to the floor near the back of the auditorium.

"People were crawling on each other, trampling each other," she said. "As I got near the door, I got up and I started running."

Officials said 162 students were registered for the class but it was not known how many were there yesterday.

Lauren Carr said she was sitting in the third row when she saw the shooter walk through a door on the right-hand side of the stage, pointing a gun straight ahead.

"I personally Army-crawled halfway up the aisle," said Miss Carr, a 20-year-old sophomore. "I said I could get up and run or I could die here."

She said a student in front of her was bleeding, "but he just kept running."

"I heard this girl scream, 'Run, he's reloading the gun,' " she recalled.

Student Jerry Santoni was in a back row when he saw the gunman enter a service door to the stage. "I saw him shoot one round at the teacher," he said. "After that, I proceeded to get down as fast as I could."

Mr. Santoni ducked, hitting his head on the seat in front of him. It left a knot about half the size of a pingpong ball on his forehead.

The teacher, a graduate student, was wounded but was expected to recover, Mr. Peters said. He did not give details of the injuries.

Mr. Peters said the gunman was not currently enrolled at the 25,000-student campus about 65 miles west of Chicago.

"It appears he may have been a student somewhere else," University Police Chief Donald Grady said.

Seventeen victims were taken to nearby Kishwaukee Community Hospital, where one died, said spokeswoman Theresa Komitas. School officials said four persons, including the gunman, died at the lecture hall and two later died at hospitals.

Michael Gentile was meeting with two of his students directly beneath the lecture hall when the shooting started. He could hear the chaos a few feet above his head.

"The shotgun blast must have been so loud," said Mr. Gentile, a 27-year-old media studies instructor. "It sounded like something was dropping down the stairs. ... We had no idea what this was."

Then came shorter, sharper noises he recognized as handgun shots.

"There was a pretty quick succession ... just pow, pow, pow," said Mr. Gentile, who didn't leave his office for about 90 minutes. He used a surveillance camera just outside his office to confirm that the people knocking on his door were police.

George Gaynor, a senior geography student, who was in Cole Hall when the shooting occurred, told the student newspaper the Northern Star that the shooter was "a skinny white guy with a stocking cap on."

He described the scene after the incident as terrifying and chaotic.

"Some girl got hit in the eye, a guy got hit in the leg," he said outside just minutes after the shooting occurred. "It was like five minutes before class ended, too."

Witnesses said the young man carried a shotgun and a pistol. Student Edward Robinson told WLS that the gunman appeared to target students in one part of the lecture hall.

"It was almost like he knew who he wanted to shoot," Mr. Robinson said. "He knew who and where he wanted to be firing at."

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives sent 15 agents to the scene, said spokesman Thomas Ahern. He said information about the weapons involved would be sent to the ATF's national database in Washington and given urgent priority. The FBI also was assisting.

All classes were canceled last night and the campus is closed today. All athletic events were canceled through Sunday. Students were urged to call their parents "as soon as possible" and were offered counseling at any residence hall, according to the school Web site.

The school was closed for one day during final exam week in December after campus police found threats, including racial slurs and references to the April 16 shootings earlier in the year at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg scrawled on a bathroom wall in a dormitory. Police determined after an investigation that there was no imminent threat and the campus was reopened. Mr. Peters said he knew of no connection between that incident and yesterday's attack.

Associated Press

Tennessee College Ravaged by Storms

By WOODY BAIRD – 14 hours ago

JACKSON, Tenn. (AP) — Danny Song bolted for cover as a tornado tore through the dormitory complex at Union University — then the ceiling came crashing down on top of a couch that was wedged against him. For the next hour and a half, he lay pinned in the rubble.

"I was in a fetal position," the 20-year-old junior recalled Wednesday. "I tried to lift up but I couldn't. I was thinking I would lose my legs. I couldn't feel them for a long time. I just felt really helpless."

Rescuers ultimately dug him out, along with 25 other Union students who were stuck behind jammed and windows and the wreckage of walls, floors and furniture — damage wrought by the violent weather that swept across five states Tuesday.

The storm left more 50 people dead across the South. Remarkably, no one died here.

About 50 Union students were taken to a hospital, nine of them with injuries classified as serious, said Tim Ellsworth, the school's news director.

Though the small, private college was heavily damaged, school officials said students escaped life-threatening injury primarily because they quickly took shelter in dorm bathrooms and other interior spaces.

Tornadoes are a regular threat in Jackson, a city of about 60,000 people 75 miles northeast of Memphis.

The campus suffered damage from tornadoes in 2001 and 2002. In 2003, a tornado struck downtown Jackson, killing 10 people and tearing a path of crumpled buildings, twisted metal and toppled trees. In 1999, twisters killed 10 people in Jackson and Clarksville.

This time, emergency planning and broadcast warnings of the twisters prevented more serious injuries, university president David Dockery said.

Each dorm room and apartment on campus is required to have the school's tornado emergency procedures posted, according to a school handbook. All the buildings are equipped with alarms that warn of both tornadoes and fire.

"When the sirens went off the entire process went into place quickly," Dockery said, noting that students had been "ushered into rooms, into the bathrooms, interior spaces."

The students, he added, "demonstrated who they are, and I'm so proud of them."

The university was in the path of at least one tornado that plowed a 35-mile, west-to-east swath across Madison County, up to a half-mile wide, Clements said.

The trapped included three young men who were surrounded by, but not buried by, rubble for more than four hours. Rescuers used a backhoe to dig a path to them, and they were freed without serious injury.

Song said he was pinned with his arms pressed to his chest and with a heavy pile of wreckage across both legs.

"We looked up and saw the funnel coming in," he said. "We started running and then glass just exploded. I hit the floor and a couch was shoved up against me, which may have saved my life because the roof fell on top of it."

Song's legs were not badly hurt, and he was back on campus the next morning surveying the wreckage.

The university's main dormitory complex of 13 two-story apartment buildings was damaged beyond repair.

Some buildings collapsed, and others were missing walls and roofs. The complex parking lot was strewn with wrecked cars and small trucks, many flipped on their backs and other stacked in small piles here and there.

"I've never been through anything like that before — the noise. Your ears pop. It makes your skin kind of crawl. It's really creepy," said Andrew Norman, 20, who huddled with seven friends in the bathroom of a dorm room during the storm.

The college, which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, has about 3,200 students, with 1,200 living on campus.

Elizabeth Walker, 20, was among a dozen students who gathered in a dorm room to ride out the storm together.

They had already begun squeezing into a bathroom, she said, when several students took a last, quick check out an apartment window.

"We could see it coming," Walker said. "It was like, 'Oh, no.'"

Radio Iowa News 

Regents ask for $2.2 million for security upgrades to universities

Monday, February 4, 2008, 8:45 AM

By O.Kay Henderson

The board that governs Iowa, Iowa State and U-N-I is asking state legislators for just over two-million dollars to make improvements in security on the campuses in Iowa City, Ames and Cedar Falls. Board of Regents president David Miles says it's part of the universities' response to last spring's shooting at Virginia Tech.

"As we know from circumstances on other campuses, we need to be doing what we can to install security measures," Miles says. "That's why we put it in the budget. We think it's important and we'd certainly like to see it funded." Governor Culver did not set aside the $2.2 million for campus security upgrades in the budget plan he submitted to lawmakers in January. Miles, the leader of the Board of Regents, says he understands the governor has to make his own choices.

"We're very pleased with the governor's overall effort, but we also reduced our 'ask' from last year to this year and we didn't put anything in there that we didn't think is very important and security is very important and we need to address it," Miles says. A spokesman for Governor Culver says the governor allotted extra money for the three universities and expects campus administrators to find ways to prioritize so the security upgrades get done.

NYTimes.com

October 5, 2007 

Army Enlists Anthropology in War Zones

By DAVID ROHDE

SHABAK VALLEY, Afghanistan — In this isolated Taliban stronghold in eastern Afghanistan, American paratroopers are fielding what they consider a crucial new weapon in counterinsurgency operations here: a soft-spoken civilian anthropologist named Tracy.

Tracy, who asked that her surname not be used for security reasons, is a member of the first Human Terrain Team, an experimental Pentagon program that assigns anthropologists and other social scientists to American combat units in Afghanistan and Iraq. Her team’s ability to understand subtle points of tribal relations — in one case spotting a land dispute that allowed the Taliban to bully parts of a major tribe — has won the praise of officers who say they are seeing concrete results.

Col. Martin Schweitzer, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division unit working with the anthropologists here, said that the unit’s combat operations had been reduced by 60 percent since the scientists arrived in February, and that the soldiers were now able to focus more on improving security, health care and education for the population.