By Kavitha Cardoza, WUIS
SPRINGFIELD, IL –
Illinois senators Dick Durbin and Barack Obama are sponsoring a bill to improve campus safety across the nation.
After the school shootings at Northern Illinois University last week, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin discussed a bill he and Barack Obama are co-sponsoring, a bill to improve campus safety.
Durbin says he would like to see every college and university have written emergency procedures and that they test them at least once a year.
He also supports the Departments of Education, Justice and Homeland Security, providing institutions with best practices expertise.
Durbin says campuses should have an emergency notification system, including through text messages that would alert the campus community in case of an emergency.
Only a quarter of students signed up for emergency warning messages at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Durbin was asked whether such a system should be made mandatory.
"I don't know how you can mandate it, but I would certainly try to," Durbin said. "First let's try to compel them to do it without force of law or other reason. But I would say, at this point, it is something that if I was sending a son or daughter off to college, I would tell them that this something you have to do."
Durbin says a House-Senate Conference Committee is expected to negotiate a final bill in the coming months.