In the January 30 webinar, “Combatting Security Challenges of an Urban University,” Maureen Rush, University of Pennsylvania vice president for public safety and superintendent of Penn Police, discussed how the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) used security to overcome negative perception.
For Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, it’s a neighborhood initiative program that looks beyond traditional campus security and that integrates university special police officers with AlliedBarton security officers. The result: recognition in the Higher Education sector in the 2013 Security 500 report.
Northwestern University police are creating a Community Emergency Response Team program to train volunteers in emergency preparedness in an effort to enhance campus safety and security.
Mass notification has become a key element of campus safety and security. John Dellacontrada, assistant vice president of media relations at the University of Buffalo, New York, says he sought a “solution that we could deploy quickly and consistently, one that would work on desktop and mobile devices to get a message broadcast via various ways and that could work with our existing emergency public address system.”
New head coaching agreements at universities specifically reference the Clery Act, a federal statute requiring schools to collect information on alleged crimes and make timely warnings of ones that suggest an ongoing threat.