Experts Offer Campus Safety Suggestions

**FILE A reporter knocks on the door of a residence of Cho Seung-Hui, 23, in Centreville, Va. on Tuesday April 17, 2007. But nearly two weeks after the shootings, Cho is as much a question mark as ever, And investigators are losing sleep over the possibility that the whys and wherefores may never come. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) (Jacquelyn Martin - AP)

-- Searching for the right college match, students and parents usually have plenty of questions about topics like class size, dining options and extracurricular activities. But colleges say they get fewer queries on counseling services and campus security.

That could change after the horrific shootings at Virginia Tech. The group Security on Campus, a nonprofit advocacy group, says a number of high schools are asking for copies of the group's "safety audit," a printed guide to help seniors evaluate campus safety along with other factors as they make their college choice.

Experts emphasize there is no way to anticipate an event like the Virginia Tech shooting. But two big issues it highlighted _ campus mental health services and security _ are topics every student should care about.

About 13 percent of university students and 25 percent at liberal arts colleges use mental health services, according to The Anxiety Disorders Association of America.

Campus crime varies widely by school, but is more widespread than many students realize. Among about 17 million college students, institutions reported relatively few criminal offenses in the category of murder or non-negligent homicide: just 15 on campuses in 2004, and 48 overall, according to federal figures.

But large communities of peers living together makes colleges more vulnerable to other types of crime. On-campus alone, there nearly 40,000 burglaries and more than 3,600 forcible sexual assaults that year.

Experts say there are questions students and parents can ask during the college search to evaluate a college's mental health and security resources.

COUNSELING: Find out whether a university's counseling center is accredited by the International Association of Counseling Services. If so, it means the center has hit a number of benchmarks in such areas as training and ethics.

The 200 accredited U.S. universities on the group's Web site are mostly larger schools, but students considering smaller schools can ask many of the same questions of college officials, says Keith Anderson, a staff psychologist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, chair of a national task force on counseling center best practices. Among them:

_ What is the ratio of counseling staff to students? (IACS suggests one counselor for every 1,000 to 1,500 students).

_ Is someone from the counseling center available 24 hours a day?

_ Are walk-in appointments available? Almost any center will have procedures for emergencies, but without walk-in hours it might take weeks to get a non-emergency appointment.