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Background
Violence on American campuses, be it the most recent events at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University or the tragic events of Columbine High School of a decade ago, has changed the landscape of security within the educational community. This litany of violence has been unprecedented and has led observers to feel that a significant paradigm shift has taken place. Violence, once unthinkable on America’s educational campuses has now taken its place along side other scenes of carnage found in the headlines of our daily newspaper and on our nightly news shows.

The violence now found on our educational campuses defies conventional analysis. It is often unforeseen, out of character and not easily understood despite the best efforts of law enforcement and the educational community to respond to this dramatic tear in our social fabric. Response to this emerging issue had been both swift and dramatic. The federal government has stepped into this issue, along with local and state governments, campus security agencies and those charged with student life and safety, to respond to these unprecedented events. The reaction by the major government and non-governmental entities has resulted in an enormous outpouring of financial and technical resources to provide assistance to the educational community in order to help them cope with this new and frightening phenomenon.

This new violence has touched not only educational and law enforcement officials, but has dramatically impacted the overall application process as parents consider new criteria on behalf of their children who may become the targets of such violence. These parents have questions and concerns regarding the safety of these institutions and how, specifically, these institutions will protect their children should this violence visit their campus.

As a result, the biggest challenge facing the educational community is not access to funding to support security initiatives or technological advances to protect their campuses, but rather how to work collectively to share and exchange information, discuss and analysis best practices, access expert professional resources and most importantly provide a platform from which the educational community as a whole can speak with a collective voice regarding the challenges and opportunities that exist in creating and maintaining a safe and secure educational environment.

The Association for Life Safety in Education (ALSE) will meet this challenge and provide this platform.
 
ALSE's Vision Statement
As a non-profit 501-C-3 organization (pending), ALSE’s primary purpose will be to provide a dynamic ongoing forum that will bring together all segments of the educational community, including K-12 school systems, colleges, universities and other individual scholastic facilities, to aid in the ongoing exchange of information, best practices and resources in order to best address the mutual challenge of providing safe and secure campuses.

In this role, ALSE will stimulate communication among its members as well as communicate with all of the interested publics including parents, students and a worried country as a whole who can now, for the first time, look to one place to gain needed information and reassurance in this challenging environment.

As a membership organization, and in support of its educational focus, ALSE will also encourage others, outside the immediate educational community, such as members of the security community, as well as federal, state and local agencies with campus security as part of their portfolios, to join ALSE and also serve as technical resources for the membership as a whole. A unique feature of the ALSE organization will be the opportunity it presents for students and others to join the organization in a capacity that will enable them to be privy to the challenges and advances being made in the area of campus security. In this configuration, ALSE will serve as a valuable clearing house for information of interest to every level of its membership.

To distribute this information ALSE, will create communication vehicles such as a monthly publication, both in print and digitally on the Internet, dealing with up to the minute information of interest to individual unique segments of ALSE’s membership. ALSE, will further provide national and regional seminars on technology and other key components of campus security; provide opportunities for continuing education programs and most importantly access and make available the best experts and resources in the security field for its members regardless of their enrollment size, economic strength or geographic location.

The ALSE staff will initially be comprised of a CEO/Executive Director and a small complement of associates, knowledgeable in security, membership and marketing communications.

The initial steps for ALSE call for enlisting the participation and support of one or more educational institutions to host a planning summit, with representation from the key stakeholders, which will establish the initial working agenda and near term direction for ALSE and its mission . This planning summit, projected be held in 2009, will identify an initial membership structure; and more importantly develop a strategic plan for a larger “founders conference” that will reflect the breadth and scope of the national educational community and formally introduce ALSE to the national educational community. This initial national ALSE conference is projected to be held in 2010.

Membership fees will be a principal revenue source for ALSE to enable it to put on the various national conferences, regional meetings and seminars that will enable ALSE to be the premier venue for campus security in this country and a model for the rest of the world. ALSE will identify and develop a cadre of experts to provide the latest in technical information through its meetings, seminars and its various web and analog publications. The establishment of an ongoing national association of this nature, committed to campus security, will provide a platform upon which experts and those in need of expertise will come together to serve the needs of the entire educational community.
 
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