Sunday, April 22, 2007
Eight days ago, William Pomerleau would not have given a second glance to the student he passed Wednesday night as he walked home across the University of Maine campus in Orono.
The student was standing outside a dorm, repeatedly pressing the security button at the entrance.
Suddenly, Pomerleau said, he imagined the scene as something other than what was probably just an impatient student trying to rouse someone to open the door.
"I got nervous. What is this kid doing? I am not the kind of person who gets uptight and worried," said Pomerleau, a UMaine junior history major.
But since the bloody rampage that left 32 students and teachers dead at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., last Monday, and a bomb scare at his own campus two days later, the world seems a lot more sinister, Pomerleau said.
The shootings have put just about everybody connected with colleges and universities on edge. Students say they now find themselves scoping out exits in large lecture rooms and thinking about what they would do if they were trapped in a building with a shooter on the loose. Parents are flooding college administrative offices with questions about campus safety and emergency management plans.
College administrators across Maine say they are working to help allay the fears. They are reviewing their existing emergency protocols and looking at ways to beef up communication and response.
Bowdoin College in Brunswick is installing a high-tech computerized emergency notification system that can instantly alert students to threats through text messages to their cell phones.
The University of Southern Maine in Portland is beginning to use mass phone messaging.
The University of Maine is re-examining whether to continue to allow students to store weapons on campus.
University of New England security personnel are meeting weekly at the Biddeford campus to share information about unusual student behavior.
SECURITY PROCEDURES VARY
Campus security varies among the state's 33 degree-granting institutions. The University of Maine at Orono, the University of Maine at Farmington and the University of Southern Maine all have full-time police departments, with armed officers trained at the Maine State Police Academy.
Most campuses are guarded by a staff of unarmed security guards, who typically carry nightsticks, pepper spray and handcuffs, and are occasionally supplemented by an armed officer from the local police department.
Unarmed security departments work closely and often train with their local police departments, officials say. Many receive annual weeklong training courses at the New England Campus Security Officers Training Academy at Bates each summer.
"We are the backup guys. We want the police there," said Tom Carey, former chief of the FBI's domestic terrorism section and now head of security and campus safety at Bates.
Carey said campus security is a balancing act aimed at keeping the grounds safe without turning them into armed fortresses.
"Colleges need to be open places. It is a hallmark of what we are in America," he said.
Almost every campus security department in Maine participates in the Maine Campus Security Directors Association.
"We share information on a regular basis because we have many of the same issues," said Randall Nichols, a 27-year veteran of the Maine State Police who now heads up security at Bowdoin College.
Campus security officials said most campuses have been alert to possible threats and look nationwide and locally for lessons to be learned from security incidents.
In the past five years, there have been a number of incidents in Maine. In 2002, Bates student Morgan McDuffee was stabbed to death a few blocks from the Lewiston campus by Brandon Thongsavanh, now serving a 58-year sentence for murder.
In 2003, Dawn Rossignol, 21, of Medway, a senior at Colby College in Waterville, was abducted and slain by Edward Hackett, a parolee from Utah.
That same year, a massive two-day search failed to uncover the body of Ryan Matt, 20, a student on leave from the University of New England in Biddeford who wandered away from a party at a home in nearby Biddeford Pool. His body was found three months later, washed up on a nearby island.
For the past year, the University of Southern Maine has been the target of repeated telephone and e-mail bomb scares, resulting in a series of evacuations. The threats have not been solved.
Security officials say communication is key to keeping on top of incidents on campuses that can sprawl across hundreds of acres or sit elbow to elbow with urban neighborhoods.
ALERT SYSTEMS INSTALLED
Although Bowdoin has not recently experienced any of the bomb threats or incidents seen at other Maine campuses, security officials have just started to use a state-of-the-art notification system that sends emergency alerts to the entire community, including staff, faculty and students, by phone, e-mail and text message. Students can be notified on up to six different communication devices, and parents can be added to the system.
But campus security officials said one system is not enough, and they need a variety of communication modes to alert the campus to danger.
Craig Hutchinson, who oversees emergency response at the University of Southern Maine as vice president of student and university life, said the college is about to install instant phone messaging, similar to the mass telephone messages used in political campaigns.
At the University of New England, officials meet weekly to discuss all incidents reported to the security staff. Don Clark, director of safety and security, said the meetings help alert them to students who might be experiencing stress or other mental-health problems that could make them a threat to themselves or others.
"Sometimes patterns emerge. It has helped us on our smaller issues," said Clark.
Although colleges and universities such as USM and the University of Maine at Farmington have strict no-weapons policies on campus, others allow students to bring hunting rifles and other weapons to school, as long as they are registered immediately and stored with campus security or police. At Colby, only one or two students a year will bring a hunting rifle to school, said Peter Chenevert, head of security.
Up to a third of the 520 or so students at Unity College, which has a large number of conservation and wildlife enforcement majors, store their weapons on campus. The vault at UMaine Orono, which has an enrollment of nearly 12,000, holds a couple of dozen weapons, including rifles, martial arts weapons, knives and Celtic dancing swords.
"We have had zero gun incidents," said UMaine Police Chief Noel March.
But many colleges said this week that they are rethinking their policies allowing weapons to be stored on campus. UMaine President Robert Kennedy ordered a review in the coming weeks. Any changes will not take place until next year, said Joe Carr, UMaine spokesman.
Even though the bomb threat at UMaine on Wednesday turned out to be a hoax -- only a locker holding a clarinet treated with a cleaning solution attracted the notice of the bomb-sniffing dogs during a search of the buildings -- students say they still feel jittery in the wake of the Virginia Tech incident.
Eben Strout, a UMaine junior, said that is because he and his classmates grew up in an era of school shootings. Many of today's college students were just entering high school when two students shot 12 students and a teacher dead at Columbine High School eight years ago.
"People are a little tense. It stirs a lot of thoughts," said Strout, a marketing major from New Gloucester.
Staff Writer Beth Quimby can be contacted at 791-6363 or at:
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