April 18 (Bloomberg) -- College officials in the U.S. are considering measures including better surveillance cameras and passes to improve security after the shooting at Virginia Tech University that left 33 people dead.

Cho Seung Hui, 23, a student at the Blacksburg, Virginia, university, shot 32 people and himself two days ago in the deadliest such attack in U.S. history.

``We have been meeting all day; there's been endless discussion,'' Massachusetts Institute of Technology spokeswoman Patti Richards said in an interview. ``The first obligation is to reassure the community that we hear people's fears and we're on the situation.''

Questions about how Virginia Tech responded to the shooting spree are heightening the scrutiny of existing procedures. More than two hours elapsed from the first shots to when students received an e-mail warning a gunman was loose on the campus.

MIT, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has more than 10,000 students and its own police force and has developed detailed emergency plans that include possible situations like the Virginia Tech shootings, Richards said.

``We work very closely with Cambridge and the Boston Police Department,'' she said.

``You always want to blame -- to blame God or blame somebody. But this is very difficult stuff,'' said Tom Cottle, professor of education at Boston University.

Shutting Down Quickly

His recommendation: ``First sound of a gunshot, the university's shut down.'' Police need to find ``every person that is commuting to the school and say, `Go home, don't come to class, don't come to school today,''' Cottle said.

Among the improvements under review by school officials are beefed-up surveillance cameras and security-pass systems, emergency sirens and the ability to instantly text-message students, staff and faculty.

Officials at Virginia Tech, formally known as Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, were working on a system to distribute emergency alerts via mobile-phone text messages after a shooting near the school last August. The system wasn't in place by the April 16 attack, President Charles Steger said at a news conference.

Many school districts across the country already have group messaging in place, according to Paul Langhorst, co-founder of closely held GroupCast Messaging Systems in St. Louis, which provides emergency voice- and text-messaging to more than 1,500 U.S. schools. He said universities have been slower to adopt such services.

Text Messages

``Yesterday, the phones were just ringing off the hook'' as colleges called about the service, Langhorst said. GroupCast can distribute about 200,000 voice messages an hour and ``many more'' text messages, which college students often check during class, he said. ``This kind of service is about $3 a student per year; it's almost not understandable how a school system could not have it.''

Universities often have sprawling campuses and seek to encourage free and open communication between students and faculty. For that reason, many schools say messaging works well, while metal detectors are inappropriate.

``Whenever we have a crisis like Virginia Tech or 9/11, there will be recommendations, and some will be making recommendations to have life on a campus more restrictive than it is now,'' said New York State Senator Ken Lavalle, who's calling for hearings on emergency protocols at the state's colleges.

Psychological Effects

Lavalle said those protocols would include preparations for treating the psychological and emotional consequences of an attack. ``We need to look at not only how we prepare to ensure that life is not threatened during a crisis, but we also have to look at the aftermath.''

Violent crimes like the Virginia Tech shooting shatter people's notion of the control they have over their lives, and a clear plan for dealing with crises can make witnesses feel more secure, said Joshua Miller, chairman of the social policy department at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Those responsible for mass suicide killings are usually isolated and alienated men, Miller said. Closer security monitoring and harsher penalties may not be the answer, he said.

``The human connection is one of the best preventative measures,'' Miller said in an interview. Reaching out to someone who's making threats or appears angry can help, he said.

Cho, the Virginia Tech gunman, was described by classmates and teachers as a loner who rarely spoke to others and wrote violent plays. Police say he was questioned over stalking incidents in 2005 and taken to a mental-health clinic after sending unwanted online messages to two women.

Copycat Threats

The shooting came eight years after two students killed 13 people and themselves at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. After Columbine, there were 450 copycat threats, plots or shootings, according to Loren Coleman, a suicide prevention and school violence consultant.

``Homicide is just a suicide turned outward,'' Coleman, author of the 2004 book ``The Copycat Effect,'' said in an interview.

Schools and universities in at least 10 states evacuated or locked down buildings yesterday in response to threats, including messages referring to the Virginia Tech shootings, the Associated Press reported today. Virginia Tech also received an ``unfounded'' bomb threat today.

The likelihood of copycat threats is influenced by how a killing is reported in the media, Coleman said. Media coverage of Columbine centered on the logistics of the killings, while reports on the October shootings of five girls in an Amish Pennsylvania schoolhouse focused on community values and ``really put the clamps on copycats in the fall,'' Coleman said.

``If we focus on analysis around the act, rather than to how people feel and react to this, then we have problems.''

To contact the reporters on this story: Tom Randall in New York at trandall6@bloomberg.net; Brian K. Sullivan in Boston bsullivan10@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: April 18, 2007 15:08 EDT