In light of recent shootings at American universities, schools across the country are again evaluating whether more can or should be done to protect students.

Three students were killed at Louisiana Technical College on Feb. 8, and six students were killed at Northern Illinois University on Feb. 14. The shootings marked the most high-profile instances of campus violence since the April 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech, in which 33 students, including the shooter, died.

The Stanford administration issued a short statement regarding the recent violence on Feb. 15. The statement said the shootings “remind us how precious life is and how important it is that we all redouble our efforts to prevent such tragedies in the future.”

The statement also highlighted Stanford’s progress toward beefing up its security measures for serious on-campus incidents. One system, already in place, is a mass-notification system that can send messages to all email addresses and phones to which the system has access. Stanford community members’ emails and residential and office phone numbers are part of the system.

The administration also plans to enter cell phone numbers and alternate email addresses collected via survey to cover more of the student body and faculty. This process should be completed by the beginning of spring quarter.

“The next step is to optimize our outreach,” said Associate Vice Provost of Environmental Health and Safety Larry Gibbs. “We have to make sure we have access to the most-used forms of communication.”

According to Gibbs, an outdoor voice and siren system should also be in place by the summer.

“For the siren, we’ve found a vendor, and installation will proceed shortly,” he said. “We’re just looking at maximization of coverage throughout the campus.”

Access to various systems should aid in scaling a response to the nature of an incident.

“No single system can maximize the outreach, so we use a more layered approach,” Gibbs said. “And all of this is situation dependent. Having multiple systems allows us many options for response.”

Stanford students generally feel safe on their campus, even after reports of shootings on other campuses. Results that will be published shortly from the annual Winter Housing Survey rank students’ “sense of safety” at 4.6 out of 5, a figure that is in keeping with historically high trends.

“It’s never really occurred to me that there could be a shooting here,” said Alex Krimkevich ‘10. “It seems very improbable, and I just don’t really see it happening.”

Students said that they felt the campus’ size greatly contributed to their feelings.

“Growing up, I would hear about shootings in high schools,” said Molly Tokaz ‘08. “But our campus is so spread-out and we have such a safe culture that it seems very unlikely.”

Manny Fassihi ‘10 found the measures appropriate but perhaps unnecessary.

“If you could communicate that there’s a threat to the whole campus, that would obviously be very helpful,” Fassihi said. “But I think this is mainly a reaction by Stanford to try to prevent outside criticisms of its safety policies. The resources might better be used elsewhere.”

“I’m generally not a big fan of the culture of fear that can crop up around things like this,” he added.