One week after the worst shooting in U.S. history at Virginia Tech, ASU is working to improve its own emergency procedures.
While the University began its discussion on safety immediately after the shooting, ASU received an anonymous threat Friday but won't comment on the investigation, said Leah Hardesty, an ASU spokeswoman.
"We plan for any emergency to happen, not just a shooter on campus," Hardesty said.
But until a full report is released from Virginia Tech, no changes will be made, she added.
"We want to be able to evaluate and see what are the lessons learned, what could we do better?" Hardesty said. "Once we're able to see that, then we'll go back and determine if any changes are necessary to our plan."
Virginia Tech officials have received scrutiny after school officials sent a mass e-mail to students two hours after the first shootings.
ASU President Michael Crow sent an e-mail to students Wednesday informing them of the different safety procedures currently in place and again Friday regarding the threat.
"The well-being of our students, faculty and staff is of paramount importance," Crow said in Wednesday's e-mail.
Currently, the University has different methods that they could use in different situations, Hardesty said.
Outside of a mass e-mail, ASU can also post messages on its Web site and televisions, Hardesty said.
Or for a more physical alert, the University can use fire alarms or Maricopa County's Community Emergency Notification System, which would deliver a message to all landline telephones.
To communicate to even more students, the University is considering a method of sending out text messages, Hardesty added.
"We had a couple of vendors approach us about that option before the incident," she said. "Now it's just kind of speeding up in progress."
Students living in residence halls could also see changes in safety protocol, said Michael Coakley, Residential Life executive director.
"We currently have emergency response systems in place that we are constantly reviewing and improving," he said in an e-mail.
The staff receives training from ASU Police and counseling and consultation, Coakley said.
"In emergency situations, the role of the residence hall staff is to immediately notify/report the situation to the appropriate individuals and campus partners to activate our emergency response procedures," he said.
Another factor in preventing an incident could be identifying troubled students early, like Seung Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter.
Cho worried faculty with disturbing writing, and while ASU has policies in place to guide faculty in dealing with such issues, a "red flag" system is impossible for creative writing, said T.R. Hummer, director of ASU's creative writing program.
"The idea is inimical to the discipline," he said in an e-mail. "Writing teachers evaluate their students on a case-by-case basis, and indeed that is (in my opinion) the ONLY way one might detect a student who poses a danger - to himself or herself or to others."
Cho's work included plays where a teacher stalked his students and one that ended with a stepfather delivering a fatal blow to his 13-year-old stepson.
Hummer said he hasn't encountered any troubled students at ASU but had elsewhere.
"Though I've never had a student I thought might be violent, I've had a number who were clearly disturbed in one way or another," he said.
And though intervention can be done to try and help students, professors can't predict what could happen, Hummer said.
"But then are we helpless in the face of the kind of threat that a pathological student might face?" he said. "To judge from events in Blacksburg, one would have to say that perhaps we are.
"This young man had been on many radar screens for years, and still the tragedy happened. I repeat: none of us is a prophet."
Reach the reporter at: matthew.g.stone@asu.edu.
