Motivated by the Feb. 14th tragedy that struck the NIU campus last year, Illinois became the first state to mandate that all state universities and colleges practice their emergency responses annually.

The Illinois Campus Security Enhancement Act took effect Jan. 1 and was signed by Gov. Rod Blagojevich on April 22, 2008.

University Police Chief Donald Grady and lieutenant Darren Mitchell from the NIU Department of Public Safety were appointed to the government task force for campus safety and assisted in the development of the new bill.

Patti Thompson, from the office of the Illinois Emergency Management Agency (IEMA), said NIU was the leading school in terms of safety organization before the shootings took place.

“The NIU Department of Public Safety has been a leading role in terms of bringing this act into existence,” Thompson said, “We are working on finalizing administration rules, the plan will be in place by July 15 in time for the 2009-2010 school year.”

Mitchell serves as director of the office of emergency management planning and said NIU was among the 13 institutions in the country to receive the Emergency Management grant from the IEMA.

“The new act requires that state universities and colleges have a formal committee for safety identified and that is something that we have had for a long time now,” Mitchell said, “We have regular training classes for our department and all of our officers are licensed emergency medical technicians, which is not something many universities have.”

Eugene Smith, junior political science major and president of the Residential Hall Association said he was impressed with how well the university responded to last year’s tragedy, and other emergency situations.

“We acted quite well given the unique circumstances last February,” Smith said. “We have a great system in place now and I feel very comfortable here because of it.”