Community colleges are not immune
Orange County Register 4/26/07
After a jazz piano concert on Jan. 18, 1986, Saddleback Community College student Robbin Brandley decided to call it a night. She walked a short way across a campus parking lot to her car, where Andrew Urdiales, a Camp Pendleton Marine, was waiting. Urdiales stabbed her more than 40 times and left her on the pavement to die.
About 150,000 people attend classes at Orange County's nine community colleges, dwarfing enrollment in the four-year institutions that have been in the spotlight since a gunman killed 32 and committed suicide at Virginia Tech last week.
While UC Irvine and Cal State Fullerton review "active shooter" protocols where their armed, sworn officers would quickly try to "neutralize" a gunman, the unarmed security staff at most local community colleges would not try to do the same.
Instead, they would summon local police, concentrate on keeping people away from the area and urge them to remain inside behind locked doors. The equipment at their disposal to spread this message includes e-mail blasts, phone trees, public address systems and good old-fashioned bullhorns.
Saddleback and Irvine Valley colleges are the only local community colleges where security officials are sworn and armed – a fact that didn't dissuade killer Urdiales from seeking victims there.
"When Saddleback opened in 1968, Mission Viejo was a rather unpopulated area," spokeswoman Jennie McCue said. "It was better to be safe."
About 60 percent of community college security forces are armed, said Tom Bauer, president of the California College and University Police Chiefs Association. The decision rests with each district.
The Orange County Register reported Sunday that a quarter of students in the University of California system take antidepressants, lithium or other prescribed psychoactive drugs. Nearly 10 percent had seriously considered suicide.
There's no similar data on community college students, but the stresses on them can be as great or greater, officials said. The overwhelming majority work at least one job. Many already have families.
A 1999 study of stress and community college students found that students needed help expanding their repertoire of coping skills. "Participants rarely consulted a counselor, therapist, minister/priest/rabbi, or other authority figure. … It may be left to counselors to reach out."
On Wednesday, Cypress College held a "shelter-in-place" drill. Saddleback is getting a new emergency communications system. Santiago Canyon College has a campuswide public address system. Santa Ana College is installing a new alarm system that can do the same. Counselors are trying to be more visible.
Orange Coast College student Michelle Schneider, 20, is from South Africa. Crime is much more a threat there, she said, but the Virginia Tech shootings underscore that nowhere is completely safe.
"The president of our campus sent out an e-mail letting us know that he is having emergency meetings about campus safety," she said. "That gives me confidence."