Less than a day after reports from Virginia Tech’s students alleged that officials did not respond quickly enough after the first of Monday’s shootings, Binghamton University officials held a press conference to announce a review of campus emergency procedures.

‘I think it is just the worst possible nightmare that any of us can ever think about,’ said University President Lois B. DeFleur. ‘And so, obviously, we now are rededicating ourselves, looking at all of our safety procedures. But, I want to emphasize that at Binghamton, we have emergency manuals, we have an emergency preparedness procedure, we have worked on a whole range of scenarios and we have disaster training ‘

BU’s New York State University Police Assistant Chief William Dunn also spoke to reporters about an ‘annual’ re-evaluation of emergency planning, and of the capabilities of the University police, which he said are fully trained at state and local police academies.

‘All of our officers are armed. And we are police officers ‘ we are trained to respond,’ he said. ‘We are ready, we are prepared and we can only hope that we will never have to use the training we have had.’

According to Dunn, in a situation similar to the one at Virginia Tech, where one building was targeted at a time, the ‘basic approach is to isolate, contain and evacuate the area that is being threatened.’

The University will also be evaluating the communication strategy for an emergency, including the possibility of text messages and a ‘reverse 911’ system where students would receive calls with automated instructions.

An emergency communication ‘tree’ is already in place, linking the administration with students through residential assistants, and residents could likely ‘expect a knock on the door’ to learn about an emergency situation.

According to a professor at Virginia Tech who reportedly filed numerous complaints against Cho Seung-Hui, the student who shot 32 other people before killing himself, privacy laws were cited by administrators who refused to take action against the troubled student. At BU, said Summers, there is a faster ‘ and legal ‘ system in place used to suspend a student who, according to the Student Handbook, ‘would constitute a clear and present danger to themselves, to the safety of others or to the property of the University.’

‘We have a procedure in our Student Handbook called summary suggestion,’ Summers said. ‘This action allows us to immediately take this student out of school. And the courts have upheld that we can do that.’

According to DeFleur, the comparative sizes and social atmospheres of BU and Virginia Tech also contribute to a different attitude towards safety.

‘Just given the sense of cooperation and interaction that we have here, the culture is, I think, quite different, and people take things seriously ‘ no matter what it is,’ she said.

DeFleur, along with Dunn and Summers, also presented reporters with copies of BU’s Emergency Reference flip charts ‘ a guide to appropriate responses to different emergencies.

The section on ‘reporting crime/threatening individual’ is, according to the officials, the closest response to a situation like the one at Virginia Tech on Monday. The guide, which has been distributed to around 1,000 people so far, advises users to ‘notify the police’ if they see anything suspicious.

‘Be realistic about your ability to protect yourself,’ the guide suggests. ‘Stay calm and avoid conflict ‘ Leave the building immediately if this does not put you at risk with the individual.’

The chart also defines a threatening individual as ‘any person who you determine to be a threat to you or those around you.’

Summers stressed BU’s emphasis on campus safety, and on the importance of the emergency procedures.

‘Every parent’s expectation is that they are going to send their son or daughter off to an institution where it is a safe environment and they are going to learn, and come back as healthy and mature adults,’ he said. ‘As we have seen, that’s not always the case.’