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State to gauge college safety needs
By Kartikay Mehrotra
kartikay.mehrotra@lee.net
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SPRINGFIELD — The Illinois Board of Higher Education will survey every state college and university on how to make campuses safer.

Officials made the decision to gauge safety needs the same day members of the Illinois House approved a resolution recognizing the Feb. 14 shooting at Northern Illinois University.

Despite NIU’s preparedness, officials are worried after witnessing how easily a shooter was able to attack students. In response, higher-education officials believe sharing details on campus security with the General Assembly may help them earn more state aid for keeping students safe on campuses.

During Friday’s hearing before the House committee on higher education funding, Judy Erwin, director of the Illinois Board of Higher Education, said, “We don’t actually have a good handle on what everyone is doing.”

By the end of the spring, Erwin and the committee chairman, state Rep. David Miller, D-Lynwood, hope lawmakers will have a working document on the cost of each institution’s varying needs.

“It would be very informative to the General Assembly to find out exactly what the needs out there are,” Miller said. “I don’t think they will be proposing metal detectors or anything like that, but it would be interesting to find out if we could provide some simple measures to increase security.”

Both Miller and Erwin emphasized that each of Illinois’ public institutions has different needs based on their location and size, so surveying every public school is vital to keeping students, faculty and staff safe.

But even after surveys from each Illinois university, college and community college have been returned, it will be up to lawmakers to increase the budget on higher education from what the governor proposed Wednesday, which Erwin described as “flat.”

“Without that line in the budget or without some recognition financially from the state of these increased costs, it becomes a much more serious problem,” Erwin said. “What we are doing right now is assessing the costs. What we don’t have the ability to do is raise the revenue.”

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Reader comments on this story - 1 total

Note: All views and opinions expressed in reader comments are solely those of the individual submitting the comment, and not those of the Pantagraph or its staff.

It can still happen... wrote on Feb 23, 2008 11:52 PM:

" I don't mean to be pessimistic but seriously someone will find a way of doing it. This world just keeps getting a little crazier every day. New technologies, everything is getting smaller and easier to conceal and a lot of people are witnessing traumatic things or unable to get help they need like this man. We need to move on from this. It is a tragedy but we keep dragggging it on and on! We need to quit jumping on EVERY little thing and start worrying about other things like getting Bush out of presidency and stopping the war and quit having racist black people...we don't have a white history month do we? NO jerks... "
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