Ohio campuses remember Va. Tech anniversary

Ric Francis/AP College students, alumni and family members of gun violence victims participate in a lie-in on Wednesday, on the campus of UCLA, in the Westwood section of Los Angeles, in memory of the victims killed at Virginia Tech University one-year ago. Similar events were held nationally to remember the tragedy.

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) - Protests and memorials on Ohio college campuses on Wednesday marked the one-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre in which a disturbed gunman killed 32 students and himself.

Shortly after noon, a group of University of Toledo students and faculty members lay down on the steps of the Student Union for three minutes, signifying how long it takes for a dangerous person to buy a gun at an unregulated gun show. Most demonstrators wore black and draped bright red scarves around their necks.

Similar "lie-in" demonstrations for tougher gun laws were planned at Ohio State University, Kent State, Oberlin College and in Cincinnati, as well as at other sites around the nation including the U.S. Supreme Court.

Participants planned to lie down in groups of 32, the number killed by Seung-Hui Cho, a mentally ill student from South Korea. At least 70 similar demonstrations were planned in 34 states urging stronger gun control laws, including one such event on the Virginia Tech campus.

At Owens Community College outside Toledo, students and faculty observed a moment of silence and raised the Virginia Tech flag. They also placed a single flower beneath a dogwood tree planted at the college a year ago to remember the victims of the mass shooting. The dogwood is the official Virginia state tree.

Across Ohio, colleges have responded in the last year by installing outdoor public address systems, creating dedicated telephone hot lines and systems that send emergency warning messages to cell phones and computers and tailoring campus counseling programs for walk-in appointments.

About 9,700 students at the University of Toledo, for example, have signed up to have emergency messages sent to the cell phones. Another 4,000 have done the same at Bowling Green State University.

Bowling Green's counseling center has also developed a guide for faculty members to spot behavioral problems, said dean of students Jill Carr.

"All of us who work with students need to be better trained and be able to identify concerns, or just to trust your intuition," she said.

Communication and awareness are the two main lessons Ohio colleges and universities have taken away from what happened at Virginia Tech, said Rick Amweg, director of campus safety and security for the Ohio Board of Regents.

A year ago, Amweg was Ohio State's assistant police chief. He was appointed to his current position after a statewide task force found a need for oversight of emergency preparedness at Ohio colleges. He's helping colleges take part in trainings and develop mass-communication systems.

The shooting at Northern Illinois University, in which a gunman killed five students and himself on Feb. 14, drove home the idea that the Virginia Tech massacre was not an isolated incident, Amweg said.

"Right on the heels of Virginia Tech, when everybody said, 'That's amazing, could it happen here?' along comes NIU," he said.