The problem in that case, if you want to start cancelling classes and turning people away, is simple. How do you get the information out? I didn’t even know they had loudspeakers on campus, but apparently, they do. So that might take care of people on campus, but what about the fifteen thousand students that live off-campus? It’s not like it’s snowing, or some obvious situation that people would be listening to determine whether or not to come to VT that day.
With regard to security, I don’t know what the VT campus police department is like. All I have to go on is my campus PD from twenty years ago, and honestly, I wouldn’t have trusted those guys to investigate ANYTHING. They wrote parking tickets. That’s it. On the very few occasions that something serious happened, the local town PD did the work. Maybe VT’s cops are better. But I seriously doubt they’ve got a fraction of the resources that even a small-town PD like Blacksburg, or the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department, can deploy.
I just don’t see how you can truly defend against something like this without turning the campus into a prison. The logistics border on the impossible.
}:-)4
how long can it take to send guards to the parking lot entrance or post signs that say “turn back, no classes, campus shooting investigation in progress”.