National response

Locking down the Virginia Tech University campus would be akin to shutting down a small city - and even then, there's no guarantee that a student concealing weapons couldn't find a way in, campus security experts said.

"In this situation, the shooter was a legitimate student who had an ID card," said Robert Rowan, director of the emergency response team at the University of Maryland's Baltimore campus. "You could easily lock a building with the shooter in it. I'm not sure that would have prevented the situation there."

Virginia Tech officials continued to face questions Tuesday about their response to the initial report of a shooting Monday. After two people were shot in a dormitory, more than two hours passed before students received alerts through e-mail that a gunman was on the loose.

Campus officials have defended their response, saying they locked down the dormitory and sounded sirens. They attributed the delay in sending out the mass e-mails to their conclusion that the first deaths were part of a domestic dispute and the danger to others had passed, even if the killer was still on the loose.

Officials from other universities and Virginia Tech students offered mixed assessments of the university's handling of the shootings - especially of the tactical decision by campus officials to treat the spree as over when the first two bodies were found.

Susan Riseling, chief of campus police at the University of Wisconsin, said a lockdown would entail locking hundreds of buildings.

"The concept of a lockdown on a 2,600-acre campus that is open and has a thousand entry points by foot or hundreds by car is not feasible," Riseling said.

Riseling, who also serves as vice president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, said that locking campus buildings could prove dangerous if the shooter is outside and people are prevented from taking cover indoors.

She also said that sending out alerts by e-mail can take longer than people might expect. First, officials must respond to the call and learn the details of the crime. Then they must weigh the threat to the community and whether sending out alerts, through e-mails or reverse 911 calls, for example, would stir unnecessary panic.

She pointed out the rarity of someone killing a person he knew - referred to as a "domestic" shooting - and then killing people at random.

"It is off the scale of what we've seen before," she said.

She said that an hour can pass between the time officials send mass e-mails and students receive them.

Joanna M. Rubard, a 21-year-old Virginia Tech junior from Herndon, Va., wondered whether lives could have been saved if students had been alerted sooner to the first shooting.

She said she did not understand why the university did not immediately institute a lockdown.

"Three hours later I had no idea," about the shooting, she said. "No one had any idea what was going on. Maybe that would have prevented the shooting at Norris if the campus had been alerted. I just don't understand how something like this could happen."

Rea Ohlschlager, 21, of Lynchburg, Va., said he was disappointed by the lack of communication between the university and students during the time the gunman was on the loose.

"Getting word out that there was a problem, that was my main criticism," she said. "It was kind of upsetting how long it took for them to tell us."

But Ohlschlager, like many other students interviewed, did not fault campus authorities for failing to lock campus buildings during the pursuit of the shooter.

Brian Thomas, a freshman from Columbus, Ohio, said school officials could not be blamed for how they responded to the shootings. "Even though this happened, I still feel this is a very safe campus. This thing, it's not something you can prevent or plan for. I think it would be wrong to judge our campus and its security by this."

Jacob Rimer, security chief for Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where visitors must pass security checkpoints before entering the campus, said the shootings at Virginia Tech testify to the need for all college campuses to be protected by checkpoints.

"It's not only because of terrorism, it's also because some people are crazy," he said.