Will College Campuses Become Too Safe?
First, a blanket apology to all that I may offend. I did, for the record, pass this by Dr. Coats, a Virginia Tech alum. Dr. Coats also made a number of suggestions that I incorporated in this post, but I’ll take the rap for this one if you don’t like it.
I am certainly not trying to diminish the tragic nature of the shooting incident at Virginia Tech (VT), nor downplay the seriousness of mental health issues. People, understandably so, have emotional reactions to these types of incidents. The media’s lascivious coverage surely contributes. However, a bit of thinking is necessary before we make policy changes in response to this incident.
Before I get started, I want to make a quick note on statistics and how “safety†is reported. Statistically, VT will be the most dangerous campus in the country for the foreseeable future. But do these statistics give us an accurate picture of the level of “safety†at VT? Is VT truly more risky this week than it was last week? When United Airlines crashes a plane, statistically, it will be the most unsafe airline for the year. But again, does this mean that United is really unsafe? Or is it that they have realized a very low probability event. The point is the statistics don’t do a good job measuring the risk level when events are very rare.
Ask folks how many people have been killed on college campuses in the last 10 years, then compare to the actual number. According to CNN, in the 52 years prior to this incident there were 39 people killed on college campuses in shooting incidents. Research shows that people have a tendency to overestimate the probability of low probability events in general.
College campuses are comparatively very safe environments. While homocide is not the whole story, according to a U.S. Department of Education report based on 1999 figures, the homicide rate at postsecondary institutions was .07 per 100,000 students compared to the the national criminal homicide rate of 5.7 per 100,000 people. You may know, as measured by crimes committed (am I talking out of both sides of my mouth?), Nicholls is one of the safest campuses in the country. Much of this has to due with its location – campuses located in non-urban areas typically have better safety records that those in more densely populated areas. Another contributor to our measured safety is that many students are commuters, so the number of students on campus at any time is small relative to the total number of students. We should probably note two more things – the recent abduction on our campus will probably dramatically reduce our ranking as a safe campus, and Virginia Tech, while not a commuter campus at all, is in one of the most rural areas possible.
My fear is that the authorities and administrators around the country will engage in very costly policy changes to make our campuses safer, perhaps too safe, in reaction to the tragedy at VT.
One of the things we stress in economics class is what could be considered the single golden rule of economics – undergo an activity until its marginal benefits are equal to its marginal costs. We also note that as more safety is enjoyed, the marginal cost of safety increases.
Say police officers can be hired at $50,000 per officer, regardless of how many officers are hired. Putting the first officer on campus may prevent, say 50 crimes, thus doing so at a cost of $1,000 per crime prevented. The second officer won’t prevent as many crimes as the first, say 25 crimes, but is still paid $50,000. Thus, these second group of crimes are prevented at a cost of $2,000 per crime prevented. The third officer will not prevent as many crimes as the second. Taking it to the extreme, VT could put 1 police officer on campus for every student. The number of crimes prevented by the 26,000th police officer would be vanishingly small. The cost of preventing crimes increases as more safety is enjoyed.
Extending this logic, it is impossible (prohibitively costly) to prevent all crime. Or stated differently, at the economically efficient level of safety, crimes will be occurring. It is foolish to think we can eliminate all of these incidents.
Can I be sure the level of safety was correct before? No. Can I be sure that there should not be more safety now? No. Am I worried that there will be too much safety in the future? Yes. Do I worry that campuses will be evacuated for comparatively minor incidents? Yes.
One additional sad part of this story is the fact that people are calling for the resignation of the VT president. Is this necessary? Does this act, in and of itself, make it more likely that other university presidents will have quick triggers? Indeed. The legal issues here are mind boggling.
My guess is that universities all around the country will adopt plans to quickly inform students – through loudspeakers, e-mail, and text messages – about emergency situations. This will be costly. (I do not know the costs of these systems, and if people do know, I’d love to hear.)
How many lives will these systems save? Will the number be large enough to justify the costs? Have you included the cost of disrupting campuses when comparatively minor actions trigger evacuations durring the middle of your math exam?
–CT
If I may head off a criticism, people who are not thinking “like economists†always freak out when economists talk about trading off dollars for human safety, or the value of a human life. Human life is priceless they say – it is not moral, just, or even sane to talk about trading off dollars for human lives.
These criticisms are unfounded. Every person makes tradeoffs in their lives between dollars and risk. If you a driving around in a car that is not a Volvo (or a giant SUV or a tank) you have implicitly traded off safety for dollars. If you have lived in a house without concrete bunkers, you have implicitly traded off safety for dollars. If you have ever decided not to call a cab when you’ve had a couple of beers, you have implicitly traded off safety for dollars. If you’ve worked in a coal mine, or an offshore rig, or even as truck driver, you’ve traded off safety for dollars.
If you find this appalling, you may think of the problem this way – many things can be done to make students safer, and yet there are only so many resources students and colleges have. For instance, students in college dorms face a higher risk of contracting meningitis. Spending more to increase safety in catastrophic events (say fancy emergency notification systems) may mean spending less on preventing meningitis, or perhaps less money to be spent on mental health on campus, or even less money to spend de-icing sidewalks. The point is to spend on safety and other things up to the point where the marginal benefits of the spending in a certain area are equal to the marginal costs of spending in a certain area.
May 5th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
I agree with this completely. I believe we should spend the money people are talking about spending for these inefficient safety devices to increase our resources available for mental health. This would prevent events like this much more that text message and loud speaker notifications that tell you once an event has already occured. This will also cost schools alot less and be much more efficient. If the warning signs, such as, the writings, plays, and actions of the VT shooter were handled properly and he was forced to see someone by the university then he could have been dealt with and maybe prevented. But no matter what we do or how much money we spend there is no guarantee that this will never happen again. The safety precautions, such as, metal detectors and police in every room will only put a serious hinder on our freedom and make college life miserable for the law abiding students
May 8th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
I agree that you cannot totally protect a campus. Even if the university got a device to send text messages or a loud speaker system, it still would not protect everyone. First of all, not everyone has a cell phone, or carries it around waiting for it to go off. Not everyone is in class rooms all the time to hear a loud speaker. If a mad man/woman decides to do something irrational they will find a way to do it. A college campus will never be able to be totally safe, no matter how much money is spent.
May 9th, 2007 at 9:21 pm
I also have to agree with these points. VT could spend all the money in the world to buy new safety devices, but people will eventually find a way to work around it. The focus needs to spent on solving the problem before it gets this far. The shooter left warning signs and nothing was done effectivly. Hopefully this will make people more aware of warning signs.
May 9th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
I also agree with all the comments. It is impossible to make a college campus 100 percent safe from incidents like this. College campuses cover to much ground. It could help to possibly have announcements over loud speakers. My comment is even though students are aware of attacks. They still have to evacuate without getting hurt. Also clearing out an entire campus would cause a lot of chaos. It is not rational to think that would work. The cell phone deal would never work due to the fact that every student would have to get a cell phone and keep it on in class. I’m sure that would make every college professor happy. It is unfortunate that this happened to VT, but its hard to think that this could be completely avoided in the future.
May 11th, 2007 at 12:06 am
Like all of the others, I also agree. I won’t really add my two cents into the conversation about VT, but in the book The economics of public issues, the same thing was basically said about aircraft flights. How safe is too safe? I really liked that comment because it seems to go hand in hand with the marginal cost vs benefits idea.
May 11th, 2007 at 10:25 am
Many of your points are well backed up and valid. However, I think they miss the main issue behind what happened at Virginia Tech and at college campuses across the country.
The true problem in the Virginia Tech shootings is that this campus in Blacksburg, VA is a “gun free zone”. Yes, even though the Bill of Rights protects our right to bear arms, founders Thomas Jefferson and George Mason publicly spoke over and over again of our right to bear arms, legislatures across this country find it necessary to ban weapons from school campuses, thus making them safer they say. Tell that to the families of the victims at Columbine and the Amish school in Pennsylvania last year. The truth is not allowing legal concealed carry laws on campuses is making schools less safe. How easily could the Virginia Tech massacre have been curbed if a student was on campus legally carrying a weapon and shot the crazed lunatic before he was able to kill more victims?
Its a simple premise. Mass murderers prefer the targets that can’t shoot back. Who would of thought? School campuses have become to mass murderers what a buffet is to Rosie O’Donnell. The so called gun free zones are only gun free for the students who follow the laws.
John Lott and Bill Landes found in a study of all public, multiple shootings in America between 1977 and 1999 that concealed carry laws have an extremely positive effect. States allowing citizens to legally carry concealed weapons deterred mass murders by 60% and the number of murders in these incidents were curtailed by 80%.
I think more Americans should be appalled at the legislatures across this country that continue to try and remove our right to bear arms, and appalled at the fact that some states and institution are under the illusion that they have the right to tell a law abiding citizen that they can’t carry a gun. Who knows, one day a legal gun carrier could save your life.
May 12th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
Safety is an illusion at a point & time casued by the temporary absence of known threats.
Until faculty & students alike realize that they themselves, personally and if need be up-to-their-elbows in bloody fighting, are ultimately the ONLY defense they can really count on, the world will continue to see self-elective soft targets preyed upon.
When the VT Administration self-selected their faculty and students to be sitting ducks, these groups of people should have reacted.
They did not and many died without any legal opportunity to defend themselves.
It is stunning how the heros of VT stood out from the sheeple – the scared reactive waiting to die, run away sorts are a sad background to the few who even with little more than their bodies tried to protect them.
Maybe not every college student has thought through scenarios like this. I know that if a situation is such that I will likely die, it surely will NOT be trying to run away or cowering.
Then I’ve mixed into my education the completion of self defense the ancient greeks considered worthy of including in the idea of University. Theirs was a not an artficial world of defenseless sheeple, but included the physical & self-defense regime to be effective in body as well as mind.
We’ve lost this somehow. And VT was a wake up call that we need it back, now.
Give us the ROTC men & women, trained and armed.
Why would we entrust an $12/hour security guard to carry a weapon while denying the same right to our societies brightest and best?
Repeal the bad social engineering that has made every school a soft-target.
We will never stop the mentally ill who crave their “death by cop” like happened at VT, but keep me armed and in place and I’ll do my best to make sure scum like our VT nutcase get their wish BEFORE innocents die.