By By JOHN EBY and KATHIE HEMPEL / Niles Daily Star
An attack on an Andrew's University professor in Berrien Springs yesterday, brought the issue of violence on campus to Berrien County.
Professor Russell Burrill was allegedly threatened and assaulted at approximately 9:15 a.m. Monday in his office at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary by an Andrews University student, at approximately the same time students were being shot on the campus at Virginia Tech.
There was no weapon involved at Andrews, according to the Andrews University relations spokesperson, Beverly Stout.
Office staff heard the struggle and calls for help. They went to Burrill's aid and called Public Safety and the local police. The student also allegedly assaulted a police officer and medic personnel, she said in a release to the press this morning.
The student, whose name was still being withheld at press time, is in police custody and has been dismissed from the university. Charges are being reviewed by the prosecutor's office.
Burrill sought medical attention, was released and returned to the classroom Monday afternoon, Stout said.
"It's hard to wrap your mind around" the kind of deadly violence which erupted at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va. Monday, killing 33 people in the deadliest shooting in American history.
Virginia Tech President Charles Steger said today the gunman was a student.
"Our police department has an officer assigned to schools. Drills on these kinds of incidents are conducted within the schools. Unfortunately, the type of incident that happened at Virginia Tech, is almost always handled on a response scenario, " Richard Huff, City of Niles Police Chief said.
"The biggest difference between our local situation and a college campus is that we have much better control over access. We know most of the people who belong on any of school campuses. When you look at a campus like Virginia Tech with approximately 26,000 students, they have an almost impossible challenge when it comes to locking down the campus," Huff said.
"We try to have teachers and students ready to report any suspicious activity. We get pretty good response from students, especially with the relationship they have with our school officer. That officer is one we try not to switch out often, to allow the relationships with students and teachers to build trust," Huff said.
Chief Bill Marx of the Buchanan City Police handled an incident last spring when a note was found threatening a bomb at Buchanan High School. This was then followed by what appeared to be a 'hit list' targeting individual students.
"Schools and our police department work very well together. We have a lock-down plan that immediately went into place. A school needs to follow its guidelines at such times and ours did. What many have difficulty understanding, is that this kind of thing comes up so often that there has to be a plan set with levels of response to suit given situations," he said.
"All of our local schools, Northside through to the high school role-play some kind of scenario, twice a year, that is relevant to the kind of situation that happened at Virginia Tech. Police run these drills," Doug Law, Superintendent of Niles Community Schools said.
'Unfortunately it's situations like Virginia Tech, Columbine and 9/11 that guided the committee's decision to make safety and security a major priority of the upcoming bond issue. We need to take every possible step to keep our kids safe," Law said.
"School districts have plans in place to take care of our students. We take every possible security measure to prevent such incidents. You do everything that is humanly possible. I feel so sorry for those 26,000 students and their families. One big difference is the size of the college community compared to a high school campus," Greg Jones, Principal of Brandywine High School said.
"I can't think of anything more unimaginable than young people starting out who become innocent victims," Southwestern Michigan College President Dr. David M. Mathews said today. "But on the other hand, look at the tens of millions who go to college" with such tragedies "relatively small."
Mathews, a former Green Beret with a doctorate in mathematics, said, "I remember being at Cambridge and there was a British surveillance van with a six-inch diameter pole sticking out with cameras. You were under constant surveillance. That's the type of tension between individual freedoms and liberties that happens when you live in a terrorist-attacked region. At the time there were still IRA (Irish Republican Army) bombers. There was controversy over all the cameras monitoring innocent people."
"There's not unanimity," he said, predicting the Virginia Tech massacre will fuel both sides of the gun debate. "Americans don't want that intrusion, yet they'll also say the government didn't do enough."
Bottom line, "People who are willing to die can do a lot of harm."
Since there have been relatively few college shootings, Mathews said "what really got colleges' and universities' attention" were the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado in 1999.
Campus shooters have typically been "disaffected" graduate students who felt they were wronged on their dissertations.
Columbine was the first "large-scale mass shooting of lots of people," said Mathews, who had a research collaborator whose husband is a staff lawyer in Tech's development department.
SMC brought in a security consultant and looked at "all the issues everybody looks at – balancing openness and freedom with security. Nobody wants to go to college in a lockdown environment. In that sense, colleges are 'unsecurable' compared to high schools," he said.
In particular, SMC formed an intergovernmental agreement with the Cass County Sheriff's Office and Dowagiac Police Department since the 13-building Dowagiac campus is just outside the city limits in LaGrange Township.
Niles' campus in Milton Township has just two buildings.
Mathews said all police officers are deputized so that they can be the first responders to campus police calls given their proximity.
Mathews said SMC employs private security personnel during some hours.
For evening events there is often a county car assigned.
"Beyond that, we are subject to all of the issues unfolding in the national debate," he said. "You can't have a policeman on every corner."
It would be difficult to lock down a commuter campus – especially one which is "the designated site for a number of area disasters."
Virginia authorities' assumption that the attack was contained to a dorm was "very plausible," Mathews said. "In 10 years, we've had three or four students who brought threats to our attention because they didn't feel safe," he said. "One hundred percent were some sort of domestic dispute. People bring their lives to their place of work and to their place of education. Domestic violence spilling over into the college environment is probably the most credible scenario."
Mathews said SMC's phone system has the capability if emergency notification is necessary to send out an alert automatically and through the SMC e-mail system, usually during a weather closing.
"There is always someone who is not going to get the message," he realizes, "but we do have the advantage of being smaller. On a small campus, we don't have nearly the challenge. Bad news travels faster than good news."