SEMO has plan for warning students

Southeast Missouri State University would use e-mails, text messages, telephones and loudspeakers to warn students and faculty if a killer or killers attacked the campus, a top official said Monday.

Each building at the university has a designated building coordinator who would be contacted by the Department of Public Safety in case of an emergency, Art Wallhausen, associate to the president, said after the magnitude of the attack on Virginia Tech University became apparent.

A siren system that covers the campus to spread warnings of tornados or other severe weather can be used with a voice-over system to alert students, Wallhausen said. But he acknowledged that the size of the campus, spread over 400 acres, makes communication difficult.

"Our job would be to minimize the impact of such a deranged person," Wallhausen said. "You can't guarantee 100 percent safety if someone is determined to come into my office to shoot me."

The university's top administrators conduct regular exercises designed to test the campus response to emergencies, Wallhausen said. The gunman scenario has never been part of those exercises, he said.

"The history of this type of event, whether it is a high school, a grade school with Amish children or a skyscraper or in Iraq with a suicide bomber is that they generally are successful, at least in part," Wallhausen said.

-- Rudi Keller