Heather Olson Left to right: Virginia Tech alumni David Peregoy, Caroline Snee, Joseph Owens, and Trey Causey join a candlelight vigil in Seattle Center April 19 for the victims of the Virginia Tech shooting.

Vic Peirsol was impressed when he arrived at SPU as associate director of Safety and Security because of the emergency plans the university had in place. Now, after the Virginia Tech shootings that left 32 people dead April 16, SPU is rethinking safety.

"The Virginia Tech shootings bring the focus back to tell us there are things we can and can't do to protect ourselves," Peirsol said.

While the changes to campus will be minor, they will be expensive, Peirsol said. One way to ensure better safety is simple security measures, such as enabling doors to lock, he said.

"It's costly, but the issue of safety on the college campus is a new phenomenon," he said. "The trade-off for security is accessibility."

There needs to be a balance between campus safety and accessibility to classrooms, Peirsol said.

"The Virginia Tech shootings found that people who barricaded them behind locked doors were safer," he said. "It sounds simple, but this is important to understanding safety."

Peirsol cited the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, in which the majority of people killed were in an open library, and Virginia Tech, where classroom doors could not be locked.

The problem, Peirsol said, is the cost to replace key locks with safer keycards in older buildings, as is the case on many college campuses.

"My frustration is that the dorms are secure, but students don't lock their doors," he said. "The first step is making sure dorm rooms and classrooms are secure, the second step is making people use the locks."