A Message From MCC President Carole Cowan

It's been more than 48 hours since the horrific tragedy unfolded on the campus of Virginia Tech, and the world continues to watch as school officials and law enforcement authorities continue to piece together exactly what happened - not just on Monday, but throughout the days and weeks that led up to the campus massacre.  Questions are being asked.  Concerns have been raised about communication issues.  Were there warning signs?  Could more have been done?

Here at Middlesex, the event that played out hundreds of miles away has served to allow us to revisit many of our own internal security and safety systems.  It is a process we had already undertaken previous to the Virginia Tech shootings, and one that will continue to unfold in the months to come.  The incident in Blacksburg just reminds us all of how random and sudden these events can be.

The safety and security of our students, staff, and faculty is paramount to us at Middlesex.  Yes, we are an institution of learning, and the education of our students is our priority.  But the safety and well-being of everyone that passes through our doors remains foremost in our minds.

Events such as the Virginia Tech shootings have caused campuses nationwide to look inward at their own policies and standards.  On Tuesday, we hosted information sessions simultaneously at both our Bedford and Lowell campuses.  At the Lowell meeting, we were fortunate to be joined by Lowell Police Superintendent Kenneth Lavallee, who supplied our personnel with several important pieces of information.  He pledged the ongoing support of the Lowell Police Department in terms of responding to emergencies at our city campus, a sentiment that the Bedford Police Department echoes as well.  At Middlesex, we also intend to expand upon our partnership with the Northeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council (NEMLEC), which is a consortium of 44 police departments.  NEMLEC has a program specifically designed to assist with school incidents, and we plan to meet with them in the coming days to bring them onto our MCC campuses specifically to help evaluate our current systems.  In addition, we are exploring the opportunity to have an independent organization provide a full-scale security audit of our facilities.

As we learned with our mock disaster training exercise in conjunction with the city of Lowell in 2005, there are always tweaks that can be done to better our systems, and we would welcome the opportunity to address any issues that make our people feel safer.

We have been in contact with the office of the Governor of Massachusetts, the Board of Higher Education, as well as the Middlesex District Attorney's office and our local police departments and are working in conjunction with their personnel to make sure that Middlesex provides the best possible information and safety measures for all of our population.  Middlesex already has an internal emergency management team, and we will be looking to those people to work closely with all of these agencies to ensure that MCC is properly addressing all of our public safety needs.  As part of that self-evaluation, we are also reviewing our emergency preparedness and response plans and our communications protocols.

Clearly, there is still much to do.  We have already engaged in some dialogues with students and faculty, and anticipate many more in the days to come.

We welcome any opportunity to hear from our personnel or the public that we serve when it comes to issues like this that directly affect you.  Please feel free to use this space as a launchpad for some of your comments, and we look forward to hearing more from you as we move forward.

In the meantime, we continue to offer our prayers and support for our counterparts at Virginia Tech.