April 17, 2007

To the ECU Family:

Our thoughts and our prayers are with our colleagues at Virginia Tech. Monday was an awful day for our nation and for higher education.

Our emergency personnel, under the leadership of Dr. Marilyn Sheerer, Vice Chancellor for Student Life, began meeting immediately to consider how we at East Carolina can be better prepared. Safety has been a front-burner issue for us in recent years, partly because of violent crimes on our sister campuses in the University of North Carolina system. We have already expanded our university police department, revamped the ways that students gain access to residence halls, appointed a campus safety officer, improved lighting at night on the campus, and negotiated a new mutual aid agreement with the Greenville Police Department. ECU police regularly practice emergency drills, both on their own and in concert with city, county, state and federal agencies. Nothing is more important to us than the safety of our students.

Unfortunately, we also know that senseless acts of violence are extremely difficult to prevent. That said, I have asked Dr. Sheerer, working with Vice Chancellor Kevin Seitz and our police and community partners, to ensure that we can get messages to our students in such a disaster, that we can lock down the campus as much as possible, and that we will have a procedure for locking down classrooms. Many other options are under evaluation. ECU is a thriving, dynamic, widespread institution. We have more than 24,000 students, about 6,000 employees, and more than 200 buildings on four distinct campus areas in and around Greenville. In addition, we occupy a number of buildings in downtown Greenville. This arrangement presents marvelous opportunities, but it also makes us vulnerable to individuals intent on doing harm. We are assessing every possible way to reduce this threat.

ECU has an excellent safety record, and we have great leadership in our campus safety organizations. At the same time, we are very concerned because our society has so many risks. That is why we will continue to devote time, energy and resources to this vital issue.

Steve Ballard
Chancellor