Virginia Tech student Bart Marsh-Slavin said he fell in love with the Blacksburg campus the minute he arrived for orientation last year.

After a student killed 32 others on campus one year ago, Marsh-Slavin was shocked at the unity displayed by the university as students, faculty and staff mourned the tragedy.

Among the lives lost was Penn State alumnus Jeremy Herbstritt, who was a civil engineering graduate student at Virginia Tech. Herbstritt's father, Michael, who works at Penn State's Office of Physical Plant, declined in an e-mail to discuss the anniversary. He wrote that his family wished to mourn privately today.

Herbstritt died in the building where Virginia Tech engineering professor Liviu Librescu, who survived the Holocaust in Romania, was killed blockading a classroom door so his students could escape through windows.

Herbstritt and Librescu were two of the 32 lives Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho claimed last year when he went on a shooting spree that started at 7 a.m. in a campus dorm and ended in Norris Hall, a science and engineering building.

Marsh-Slavin said he was walking past Norris Hall during the shooting. He heard shots but he thought they were construction noises.

When a police officer armed with a shotgun told him to clear the area, he realized something more significant was happening.

Classes at Virginia Tech are canceled today for students and faculty to gather at the drill field to remember the victims, Marsh-Slavin said, adding that the Virginia Tech community has unified.

"There is no place I'd rather be," he said.

Around the country, people displayed support for Virginia Tech as university officials responded to the increased public awareness of campus safety and student mental health issues.

Technology security

Foolproof security is not possible on college campuses, said Steve Abrams, Penn State's emergency management coordinator, but his job is to ensure the university's plan is near perfection.

Abrams said Penn State had systems such as PSUTXT -- which sends messages to subscribers' cell phones -- operational before Virginia Tech, but the tragedy resulted in student awareness of the service.

"Virginia Tech has changed thinking across academics everywhere in higher education," Abrams said.

He said Virginia Tech served as a guide to test the Penn State system, which managers constantly evaluate and update.

"But I'm the last guy that wants to have an emergency," he said. " ... We can have wonderful processes, great technology and well-trained people, but I never want to use them."

Katherine Bird (freshman-division of undergraduate studies) said she thinks a shooting could happen at Penn State.

"Most people take for granted that we are in a safe area," she said.

Tim Delaney, University of Pittsburgh police chief, said his new fiber-optic emergency center can shut down 90 percent of the campus with the push of a button.

If a shooter is reported, police can use cameras to warn officers of what they will find at the scene and can instantly pull up class schedules to know how many students are in the area, he said.

Using 300 cameras, police can constantly monitor the entire campus using a system being copied by the city of Pittsburgh and already installed in seven NFL stadiums, Delaney said.

However, police can never plan for every scenario, he said. And many students are aware of that.

"We have the best security we can. You never know if something might unleash," Erica Diaz (freshman-labor and industrial relations) said. "Virginia Tech could happen anywhere."

Texting danger

It is impossible to prevent a tragedy such as the shooting at Virginia Tech from occurring, Penn State spokeswoman Annemarie Mountz said. Penn State has emergency plans, but the campus is a free and open society, she said.

"Campus is not surrounded by a 12-foot barbed wire fence," Mountz said.

It is "ludicrous," she said, to ask if security has increased in the past year because emergency systems such as PSUTXT have existed for years.

Mountz said a March 31 test of PSUTXT successfully checked for system weaknesses.

Representatives from all Penn State campuses signed into the server simultaneously and sent between 38,000 to 39,000 messages to the 39,075 people who have a valid subscription, she said.

PSUTXT was the model used in a July resolution sponsored by state Rep. Scott Conklin, D-Centre. Tor Michaels, Conklin's chief of staff, said the resolution brought awareness to Penn State's system for other state colleges.

"I think Penn State is safe. I have never felt threatened, but something like Virginia Tech could happen anywhere," Kara Gallo (freshman-engineering) said. "We have PSUTXT and the residence halls have lock down -- I think that is safe."

The right to bear arms

Students such as Nathaniel Sheetz (graduate-industrial engineering) say one way to secure campuses is to urge universities to reconsider their policies against carrying concealed weapons.

Sheetz is the campus representative for the Penn State chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, a nationwide organization with 25,000 members who believe individuals should be permitted to carry handguns.

He said being able to carry a concealed weapon is imperative to shorten shooting sprees.

"If a killer starts shooting someone, the only way to stop that person is for someone to be on site who already has a gun and has the ability to use it," Sheetz said. "It takes police too long to get there."

Penn State's SY12 policy prohibits anyone from wielding "instruments or implements which are capable of inflicting serious bodily injury."

"Criminals do not obey laws," Sheetz said. "Illegally carrying a gun or buying a gun is the last thing on [a shooter's] mind, especially since they're probably going to kill themselves anyway."

Mark Hough, Class of 2005 and Campus Crusade for Christ staff member, said students should be able to carry guns on campus to react if people were held at gunpoint.

Even though Josh Patterson (sophomore-economics) said he thinks no security system can safeguard the large number of people on campus, he doesn't want citizens to have guns.

"I don't think students should have firearms on campus," he said. " ... Maybe limited other weapons like knives, but guns are a bad idea. ... They would scare people."

Providing help

Dennis Heitzmann, director of Penn State Center for Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), said mental health facilities, though often understaffed, help students with stressful college life. CAPS has 14 full-time and seven part-time staff members.

Heitzmann said he spoke with Virginia Tech's counseling director, who said Cho didn't fall through the cracks but hid in them.

Investigations of the shooting revealed that shooter Cho had been evaluated by psychiatrists and deemed potentially dangerous but no follow-up was done.

Counselors need teachers, friends and family to take an active role in connecting the dots of disturbing behavior, Heitzmann added.

Marsh-Slavin said future tragedies can be avoided if more teachers report students who display disturbing behavior.

Former Northern Illinois University student Steven Kazmierczak killed five people and injured 18 more on Feb. 14 when he entered a full classroom and started shooting. The tragedy ended when Kazmierczak killed himself.

Police believe Kazmierczak stopped taking his medication.

Congress has been asked to fund a student mental health needs database, Michaels said. The bill uses the Center for the Study of College Student Mental Health (CSCSMH), which is led by CAPS, as an example.

The resolution states that mental health centers will gather data to upload to CSCSMH servers for other counselors to use.

"There is no system in the world that can protect us 100 percent but at the end of the day, we want to say we did everything we could," Michaels said.

Collegian Staff Writers Margaret Miceli and Holly Vandegrift contributed to this report. The Associated Press contributed to this report.