Mesa began working to improve campus safety 18 months before the Virginia Tech shootings made it a major concern for colleges.

The plan is part of a two-year district-wide emergency plan to help educate students on what to if an emergency or disaster occurs on campus.

Campus police have been working on several drills to prepare for different scenarios including hostage situations, bomb threats and an armed person on campus.

“These drills were scheduled before the Virginia Tech incident and are in fact scheduled periodically throughout the academic year,” Mesa President Rita Cepeda said.

The drills help ensure that Mesa stays one of the safest campuses.

“Mesa is one of the safest campuses in the state, if not the country,” said Charlie Hogquist, Chief of Police for the San Diego Community College District.

The Virginia Tech shootings have made the campus police reevaluate their plans for a safer campus.

“We are putting these plans in place and we will modify them based on what happened, but we’re not going to rush judgment,” Hogquist said. “We want to make sure if we make a change it’s something that’s beneficial. Virginia Tech is a campus surrounded by wilderness, it’s in a small town . so they have different things.”

In January 2007, the college police used Mesa as a training facility. The police were put in different scenarios that ranged from people being taken hostage to armed people on campus.

In July the campus police will be conducting more training at City College to try to meet their goal of training on each campus during this year.

Each campus will have a different plan and all of the training will be geared to the campus.

“We gear our plans and our activities to each campus so that one size doesn’t fit all,” Hogquist said. “At Mesa if we have a specific issue we’re going to deal with that issue at Mesa and that issue may not exist at City or Miramar.”

In the future there might be an option for students’ to sign up for emergency notifications when they sign up for classes. The notifications would be sent to students cell phones.

“We’re developing emergency development plans in a two-year process that would use media outlets to get the word out to students,” said Hogquist.

Mesa student Ben Schwartz believes that the problem isn’t safety, but being educated on what to look for.

“I don’t think something can be done as far as safety, just as far as awareness,” Schwartz said. “It’s impossible to make the campus totally safe, it’s all just social awareness.”

Mesa student Debra Gring said that the only way to completely prevent students from bringing guns onto a campus is to have metal detectors like they do at some high schools.

“I feel safe here,” Gring said. “After this I felt weird coming into school because those kids felt safe too. There is really nothing that would stop it from happening here too.”

The San Diego Community College District has 25 police officers, seven sergeants, two lieutenants and one police chief. Mesa College, City College, Miramar College and six continuing education centers are patrolled around the clock.

“Some officers float between campuses,” Hogquist said. “We could have anywhere from six to 12 officers working. Officers are out letting everyone see they are there and that’s a criminal deterrent.”

The campus police are attempting to hire more officers.

“We currently are four officers under authorized strength,” said Lieutenant Jack Doherty of the campus police. “We have proposed adding nine additional officers over the next five years.”

On average it takes two minutes or less for an officer to respond to an emergency on campus during the week and maybe more on the weekends.

Mesa will be receiving some added safety features later this year when a new parking structure is built. The structure will contain emergency call boxes and video cameras on each floor. It will also make it easier for students to reach their classes on foot.

There have been no threats to Mesa recently. The last threat was in Fall 2006 when someone called in a bomb threat that turned out to be unsubstantiated.

The campus police urge students to report anything suspicious.

“Mesa College is one of the safest places in the city of San Diego,” said Lieutenant Doherty. “The key to staying safe is for continued involvement of student, faculty and staff. By bringing safety issues and suspicious activity to our attention, we can help insure action is taken.”