Va. Tech security proposal: more locks

BLACKSBURG, Va. – After a student gunman killed four of his classmates and his German teacher and then left, Derek O’Dell had to wedge one of his sneakers under the classroom door to keep the attacker from returning to kill even more.

There was no lock on the door to protect Derek and his wounded classmates against Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 30 students and faculty members, plus himself, at Virginia Tech’s Norris Hall. Two others were killed in a dormitory.

Safety experts say that while school officials across the nation re-evaluate campus safety in the aftermath of the tragedy, many are overlooking a simple solution: putting locks on the inside of classroom doors.

“Often it’s the simple stuff that will prevent a tragedy like this, and often it’s the simpler things that will make the bigger difference,” said Michael Dorn, a campus safety consultant and author of 19 books on the topic. “It’s not the complex systems that cost millions of dollars.”

O’Dell was shot in one arm, but he and some classmates barricaded the door to Room 207 with his shoe and their bodies – “the heaviest thing in the room was bolted down and the desks were pretty flimsy,” he said – as Cho returned twice to try to finish them off. When he couldn’t get in, Cho stepped back each time and fired a round into the door, one shot penetrating O’Dell’s jacket but missing his body.

“It’s kind of crazy to think that you have 1 1/2 or 2 inches of wood between you and a person with a gun who just killed half your classmates,” said O’Dell.