A new provision to the Jeanne Clery Act will help college students be notified immediately in the event an on campus emergency takes place. The provision is in response to the Virginia Tech massacre where 32 students and employees were killed in April 2007.

As students return to college this week and next, a new law designed to protect them in the event of an on campus emergency has been signed by President Bush. This law is in response to the shootings on the Virginia Tech campus in April 2007 that took the lives of 32 people, many of whom had no idea that a gunman was on the loose.

“Immediate notification of an emergency will empower students and employees to better be able to protect themselves and save lives,” said Jonathan Kassa, the Executive Director of Security On Campus, Inc., a national non-profit organization that worked with both families of the Virginia Tech shooting victims and campus law enforcement to help develop the new warning provision.

The Jeanne Clery Act

The new provision is part of the Jeanne Clery Act, named for a Lehigh University student who was murdered in her Lehigh University dorm room in April 1986 by a fellow student whom she did not know. Connie and Howard Clery, Jeanne’s parents, took their grief to start a movement to protect college students, learning along the way that criminal activity on many college campuses wasn’t shared with students and their parents. Working with legislators, the Clerys helped make the Jeanne Clery Act law in 1990 with several amendments added since then.

This provision “will go a long way to make our nation’s campuses and students safer and improve colleges’ readiness and in the event of emergencies,” added U.S. Representative Carolyn McCarthy (NY-4), one of the leading proponents of the measure in Congress. “Using both high and low tech means, many institutions across the country have already adopted this approach and are issuing campuswide emergency notifications.”

More Than 30 State and Federal Laws Passed

Jeanne’s father, Howard, died earlier this year at the age of 77 in Florida. The Clerys co-founded Security on Campus and helped to draft and see the passage of more than thirty state and federal laws to protect college students. The organization maintains a website where visitors can learn more about the Jeanne Clery Act and what they can do to help make their college campuses safer.

References

Security on Campus

U.S. Department of Education — Campus Security (pdf)

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Tags: campus security, Carolyn McCarthy, Jeanne Clery Act, President Bush, Security on Campus, Virginia Tech

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) recently invited 61 students from 14 colleges and universities from around the globe to participate in a design competition to create what the next generation of airliners and cargo planes may look like. 14 teams and 2 individual students submitted their designs in the annual competition which was sponsored by NASA’s Fundamental Aeronautics Program, part of the agency’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate.

The Spoils Go To Georgia Tech And To Virginia Tech

Atlanta’s Georgia Tech fielded the highest scoring graduate team while Virginia Tech, located in Blacksburg, VA, took undergraduate team honors.

NASA’s contest asked students to create a future subsonic transport aircraft with a load capacity of up to 50,000 pounds, operate on runways between 1,500 and 3,000 feet long, and cruise at speeds between 595 and 625 mph - about the average speed of airliners today. Significantly, the competition stressed that concept planes should use alternative fuels and be quieter and more environmentally friendly than today’s commercial fleet.

The Need For Environmentally Friendly Aircraft

“The nation’s air transportation system is under tremendous pressure to increase performance and capacity without causing additional damage to the environment,” said Juan Alonso, director of the Fundamental Aeronautics Program. “Through competitions such as this, we are nurturing a new generation of engineers who can deliver the solutions we so desperately need.”

Contest judges graded each design on criteria which included creativity and imagination, feasibility and cost analysis, and comprehensive discussion of design concept.

“The invention, imagination and engineering exhibited in these college proposals was extraordinary, and in parts superior to the concepts prevalent in the current professional literature. These entries bode well for the future of civilian aeronautics,” said Dennis Bushnell, chief scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. Bushnell was one of several NASA experts who judged the competition.

What The Winners Received

Six U.S. students received a 10-week paid summer internship at one of four NASA research centers around the country while non-U.S. student winners received an engraved trophy and certificate. Next year’s competition, which is already being planned, will be announced by the end of this summer.

A complete list of winners of the college contest can be found at: http://aero.larc.nasa.gov/

For more information about NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, visit: http://aeronautics.nasa.gov/

For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/

(Source: NASA)

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Tags: aircraft design, competition, contest, Georgia Tech, NASA, Virginia Tech