Report Identifies Best Security Practices at Northern Illinois University

A report from the Illinois Campus Security Task Force, established after the Virginia Tech shootings, was given to Gov. Rod Blagojevich in April 2008. The task force, which included representatives from Northern Illinois University, made “initial observations” and identified “best practices” based on the response and recovery at NIU.

NIU’s philosophy towards emergency response recognizes that planning is important, but insufficient without training and exercises.

Planning and training must be conducted in partnership with all relevant campus, surrounding-community, local and State partners.

Emergency incident planning must emphasize clear goals, objectives and equal footing for all partners; disciplined, well-exercised response; avoidance of “first impulse” by responders, and a clear, well-organized chain-of-command, with assigned roles and delegated responsibilities; response leaders from a campus and its surrounding community must know each other and train with each other before an incident occurs.

All high-level campus administrators and managers conduct at least one simulation per year to review their roles, duties and protocols during an incident.

Campus security police also conduct their own simulations and training, often involving multi-jurisdictional and interdisciplinary response.

The university develops an incident action plan for multiple contingencies, using that framework to respond to any size incident.

Parental notification was a priority, but was not actually conducted until the immediate incident response was concluded to ensure the most accurate parental notification.

The Illinois State Police is working on a formal report about the shootings, says Joe King, assistant director of public affairs at NIU.

Desiree Hanford is a freelance writer who spent 10 years as a reporter for Dow Jones. She is a former assistant editor of Building Operating Management.

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