GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — It’s been over a month since the mass shooting at Michigan State University and campus safety continues to be top of mind for many schools in West Michigan.
FOX 17 spoke with the heads of security at Calvin University in Grand Rapids and Ferris State University in Big Rapids.
And while their student body sizes and campus layouts may differ, the changes they plan to make following the mass shooting at MSU align.
The weight of keeping students and staff safe is getting heavier for those who lead campus security, no matter the size of the school.
“Our campus is a little over 400 acres, and we have close to 100 buildings on our campus,” Calvin University Director of Campus Bill Corner said.
Calvin University sits directly off the East Beltline near East Grand Rapids.
“We have about 3.4 million square feet of buildings here on campus,” Ferris Public Safety Director Abe Haroon said.
“We have about a 10,000 student population.”
FSU, meanwhile, is nestled in the heart of Big Rapids. Their student population is roughly triple that of Calvin’s.
“It's an open campus, which means that it's not really directed, " Haroon explained. “There's multiple avenues in and out of the campus.”
Ferris Campus Map by WXMI on Scribd
Accessibility is a big concern for both schools as they lie next to highly traveled areas with popular residential areas, just like buildings entered by the shooter at MSU back in February.
“We have the ability to secure all the exteriors of our buildings with a one-button solution,” Corner said.
It's a similar response to what we've heard from Grand Valley State University, which laid out its plan just days after the February 13 shooting— including the ability to lockdown campus with the push of a button.
Both say in the wake of the shooting, talks of stepping up security have been top of mind.
But the question remains, how can these institutions tighten security, and continue to make campuses open to surrounding communities?
Bill Corner with Calvin University says for them, it starts with identifying blind spots on campus.
He says that means continuing to upgrade classroom door locks, making them more secure and easy to lock as well as looking at where they can add more cameras.
Students and staff at Ferris already go through active shooter training, but university Public Safety Director Abe Haroon says plans are now in place to change what that looks like.
“Right now it’s web-based and maybe we’re going to get better engagement having them in person.”
Both directors credit police response during the shooting at MSU, saying they’d like to have a more robust plan to place to help local police and emergency response as soon as an alert is sent out.
“(It means) providing to 911 dispatch centers things like floor plans, maps of the campus, addresses of buildings, identifying who are key members of our staff so that if we have to work together, they know who we are,” Haroon said, telling us they're doing everything they can now to prevent these tragedies from happening in the future.
