Violence on campus
BY GEORGE WINNER

Columbine High School. It was eight years ago - April 20, 1999 - when the massacre at a high school in Columbine, Colorado seared the nation's heart and made so many of us pause to ask, most of all, this question: Why? And to then ask: How can we keep it from ever happening again?

It will be the same, now, with Virginia Tech. The terrifying and tragic events on the Virginia Tech campus have shaken this nation to its core once again over the past week and, just like in the aftermath of Columbine, will keep us asking why.

In the aftermath of Columbine, there was an immediate, virtually nationwide reassessment of school safety. Here in New York State, the Legislature ultimately approved the Safe Schools Against Violence in Education Act (Project SAVE) to establish school-based codes of conduct, safety and emergency response plans, as well as a uniform violent incident reporting system and a school violence prevention grant program.

In the aftermath of Virginia Tech, the Legislature will engage a similar response which, in fact, is already underway in a few different ways.

The Senate Higher Education Committee, on which I serve as a member, will convene the first of what may evolve into a series of public hearings to review campus security at New York State colleges and universities. The first hearing will be held on May 1st.

Before Virginia Tech, the world of higher education was embroiled in the ongoing and ever-widening investigation into questionable practices within the student loan industry. And rightly so. It's an $85 billion-per-year industry that can never be allowed to exploit students and their families.

Assuring the integrity of the student loan industry needs to continue, and it will. But you can bet that attention is going to shift now to what must always be the No. 1 priority on our college campuses: student safety.

The Senate Higher Education Committee's upcoming hearing will seek to ensure that the very best security practices are being instituted by New York's colleges and universities. We'll invite testimony from higher education leaders like State University of New York Chancellor John R. Ryan, college presidents and others. Our campus security hearings will examine issues like student and faculty preparedness, notification systems, communications and coordination with local law enforcement in regard to containing immediate threats and violence on campuses.

We're seeking to determine what's being done, and what can be done better.

That'll be one piece of the effort. Another piece will deal with the societal implications of a tragedy like the one that occurred at Virignia Tech.

In the wake of Columbine, the State Senate formed the Task Force on Youth Violence and the Entertainment Industry. After a series of public hearings, the task force issued recommendations and developed legislation aimed at combating and reducing children's exposure to violence and inappropriate materials within video games.

So we're going to renew the work of the task force recognizing, once again, that the violent video game controversy remains, at best, unsettling.

The electronic game industry is pervasive. It's a big money industry that's extremely influential in young lives. Studies have shown that upwards of 80% of American youth between the ages of seven and 17 now play computer or video games on a regular basis. And every now and then a terrible event like the Virginia Tech massacre reignites the constantly simmering controversy.

It's been a difficult week to pick up the newspaper or watch the nightly news, but now we face the even tougher task of picking up the pieces. Now we need to once again ask why, and to keep searching for the answers, in so many places, that can make our society safer, saner and more secure.