Julie Ledig will become provost of the Loudoun campus on July 30.

NOVA’s Loudoun campus will have a new provost come July 30 when Julie Leidig takes the top position at the campus. The provost oversees student services and campus operations.

“Dr. Leidig’s expertise and strong leadership in higher education will be a valuable addition to NOVA,” NOVA president Robert Templin said in a press release. “We look forward to welcoming her as a member of our administration.”

Leidig comes from a position as vice president of instruction at Lone Star College – Montgomery, a community college in suburban Houston. There, she oversaw non-credit instruction, workforce education, continuing education, library services, instructional support, professional development and school partnerships.

Before her current position, she served in a role where she was responsible for academic issues. In that position, she helped developed a transferable curriculum for core courses and a database of common courses for both transfer and workforce education.

Leidig holds a doctorate in educational administration and community college leadership from the University of Texas at Austin. She holds two master’s degrees, one in foreign language, the other in adult education and human resource development. Her bachelor’s degree is in political science.

In 2009, while at Lone Star, Leidig was selected as a finalist for college president, but another candidate was eventually chosen.

In early April, Leidig participated in a town hall meeting at the Loudoun campus.

Leidig replaces Anthony Tardd, who served as provost for 10 years at Loudoun and in several other capacities at NOVA for over 30 years. Tardd resigned his position at the end of 2009, and an acting provost has been serving in the interim.

The Loudoun campus is home to nearly 15,000 students in credit and non-credit programs. In addition, the Loudoun campus serves students at the Reston Center and Signal Hill sites.

The event began with remarks by Dr. Peter Maphumulo, provost of the Alexandria campus. He discussed the importance of sports within the overall NOVA experience, and mentioned that NOVA would soon be considering whether or not to strengthen its sports program.

With the introduction of men’s lacrosse this academic year, NOVA now has six teams that engage in intercollegiate competition.

At the banquet, plaques were given to the team members and academic awards were given for the first time.

Special awards for various sports and the winners included the following:

Women’s Basketball

Player of the Year: Stella Holloway

Coach’s Award: Kristen Dukes

Men’s Basketball

Player of the Year: Jermaine Wright

Coach’s Award: Rich Waldron

Men’s Soccer

Player of the Year: Jean Pierre Kanashiro

Coach’s Award: Werner Brito

Women’s Volleyball

Player of the Year: Zoie Seay

Coach’s Award: Sima Azarani

Coed Ice Hockey

Player of the Year: Scott Johnson

Coach’s Award: Chris Altice

Men’s Lacrosse

Player of the Year: Kiel Cooke

Coach’s Award: C.J. Ward

Annandale campus Police Officers Tony Ong and Andrew Jenkins pull over dispatcher Chase Briggs in a reenacted routine traffic stop.

It’s happened to many of us. We’re driving along, maybe late for class and going too fast or looking for a parking space and not paying attention to how we’re driving. Then we see blue lights flashing behind us. No matter who we are, we get nervous. We may wonder what we did wrong, or we may know. But even if we do know what we did, we don’t all know what to do next.

People tend to love police officers when they need their help and curse them when they get a traffic ticket. But the officer walking toward your car has a job to do, and part of that job is to give tickets to anyone violating traffic laws, which still apply on campus.

Remember, the officer may be nervous, too. He or she doesn’t know if you are armed or how you’ll react. And violence can happen anywhere.

According to Officer Tony Ong of the Annandale campus police, the protocol for a traffic stop begins with activating the police vehicle’s emergency lights, followed by calling the stop in, running the license plate to check for warrants and looking for anything out of the ordinary. Then, once up to the stopped vehicle, the officer will scan the driver to see if he or she is hiding something.

If running the tags reveals a warrant, then another NOVA police officer is called to the scene as backup. If no other campus police officer is available, then the officer may request assistance from a local jurisdiction.

So what should drivers do when pulled over?

Ong and Sgt. John Stasiowski, also of the Annandale campus police, offer advice on what to do when the police lights are flashing behind you.

First, find a safe location and pull over, preferably on the right shoulder out of the flow of traffic. Stasiowski said people tend to act in unpredictable ways once they notice the police lights. Some stop immediately in the road, so the police have to be prepared for anything.

After pulling over, keep your hands on the steering wheel. If it’s dark, turn on the exterior light. Lower the window in order to communicate with the officer.

Be prepared to show the officer your driver’s license, vehicle registration and proof of insurance. Stasiowski said that all three of these must be carried by drivers when operating a motor vehicle. So even if you have a valid driver’s license, if you left it at home you could still get a ticket.

So what should drivers NOT do when pulled over?

Stasiowski stressed that, when stopped by the police, you should not get out of your vehicle. The police don’t know what your intentions are, and it’s seen as a threatening move.

“It may be the practice in some other states for the officer… to motion the violator back to their vehicle, but that’s not the way it’s done in Virginia,” stated Stasiowski.

He also advised not to argue with the officer.

Not signing the ticket will result in being arrested and taken before the magistrate, according to Stasiowski. He added that signing a ticket is not an admission of guilt. It’s an acknowledgement that you’ve received the ticket, which is also a summons to court to answer to the charge.

Ever wonder why officers ask drivers if they know why the police pulled them over? Stasiowski said that sometimes the driver will reveal something else. Once, he stopped a woman for making a left turn where that action wasn’t allowed. After asking her if she knew why he pulled her over, she said it was for driving too fast.

Ong said he often hears the excuse: “I didn’t see the sign.”

He’s also heard: “I’ve only been driving for a couple of days,” which he doesn’t find credible.

“They make it seem like it’s something they’re not supposed to know immediately,” said Ong.

Another common excuse is: “I didn’t know.” This excuse doesn’t work because drivers are obligated to know traffic laws before getting a driver’s license.

“This reason why I’m stopping you is not something new,” he added.

Students aren’t the only ones who need to follow traffic laws on campus — the college faculty and staff are issued tickets if they violate the law.

Update:
Shortly after this story was published NOVA added a copy of the report to their website. It can viewed in two parts here and here.

Last December’s shooting at the Woodbridge campus opened many concerns on safety issues at NOVA. To address those questions and provide ideas for a safer environment for students, faculty and staff, NOVA president Robert Templin created the Presidential Commission on Safety and Security. The commission was charged with creating a report on the state of safety and security.

Despite a special web page detailing the creation of the commission, neither the final report nor a summary of its findings, are publicly available on NOVA’s web site. However, the NOVA Fortnightly was able to obtain the report through a Freedom of Information Act request.

While the report reiterated earlier findings such as untimely alerts immediately after the Woodbridge incident, it also revealed major security issues including comments that alleged weapons are routinely on some campuses and a breakdown in monitoring potentially disturbed students.

New details also emerged as to some of the failings that happened in the Woodbridge incident. Only nine of the 45 cameras at the Woodbridge campus were operational. The report attributed this to a system that regularly crashes and is in need of frequent repair. Police communications were also hindered because their radio system is unable to provide campus-to-campus communication.

But the college is already correcting some issues. For instance new locks are being installed at all campuses that will allow for more secure sheltering-in-place. This project is due to be completed in mid-July. The Facilities Department is also installing a public address alert system at the Manassas campus.

One of the problems raised in earlier reports has been a complicated chain of communications when college officials attempted to disseminate information and coordinate a response. To partially remedy this, the report suggested that a centralized dispatch center be set up.

Such a dispatch center would have several functions and would rectify many issues NOVA has been warned of since at least 2007. For instance, evacuating the Woodbridge campus as emergency responders searched for bombs and active shooters was complicated because keys and floor plans were in the emergency area, rendering them inaccessible. In the future, the dispatch center could serve as a repository for such materials.

The dispatch center would also be responsible for more routine duties such as monitoring video systems.

The commission also collected feedback via an online survey. Both students and faculty raised concerns on a number of safety issues.

At least four comments alleged that there are deadly weapons routinely on the Alexandria campus. Others felt threatened in some of the smaller buildings at that campus including the Engineering and Tyler buildings. Other comments suggested officers should be stationed at those buildings – especially at times when they are near empty. And yet others felt the large, rowdy crowds that gather outside the cafeteria pose a safety risk.

At the Annandale campus, faculty felt that floor wardens lacked proper training in such areas as CPR, defibrillator use and emergency coordination. They also noted an issue of poor communication during a fire drill when the “all clear” signal was sent to phones inside the buildings.

At Manassas, floor wardens need a budget to purchase hand held radios. The report also noted a pressing need for a working emergency alert system on campus.

Improvement could be used for dealing with student behavior issues, according to the report. One of the public replies to a question asking what the most important safety issue was said, “Feeling safe about giving students the grade they earn.”

One comment felt the dean of students at the Annandale campus does not “really care about what you have to say when you’ve been harassed.” Another comment urged NOVA to “hire a dean of students who is qualified to advise faculty what to do about troubled students.”

The Annandale Campus Council – a group of faculty and instructors – further reported they had a “great concern for the lack of consequences for students who misbehave.”

However the criticisms of student behavior monitoring were not just through public feedback. The report noted complications in the relationship between the CARE team, which is responsible for students with “concerning behaviors,” and the dean of students, who also deals with student behavior issues.

The report urged that the roles for those dealing with “concerning behavior” be clearly defined. It also noted the need for case management when dealing with reports of troubled students.

The report included feedback from a variety of sources including online polls, which solicited feedback from the NOVA community. Students were also represented on the commission by Arthur Tamayo, the president of the Woodbridge student government association. Other members of the commission included Michael Turner, the Woodbridge campus dean of students, and Sam Hill, the provost of the Woodbridge campus.

East Campus Drive has large potholes down to the dirt, left over from 2010's harsh winter.

Road damage along East Campus Drive at the Alexandria campus will be repaired next week resulting in parking lot closures and bus detours until June 3 at the earliest. In addition East Campus Drive is closed to automobile traffic.

During the repairs Metrobus routes 25A, 25B and DASH Bus AT-6 will not pick up passengers along East Campus Drive, including the stops at Dawes Avenue and Beauregard Street. According to an email sent to students, signs will be posted at the affected bus stops. Normal bus service will resume when East Campus Drive is reopened.

The B-6 student parking lot – across from the newest section of the Bisdorf Building – will be closed during that time also.

The sidewalk along East Campus Drive will remain open for use, meaning students can still use the Beauregard Street Garage for access to the Bisdorf Building.

The road repair has taken longer than originally expected. In an email update sent on May 27, Alexandria students were informed that contingent on good weather the project would finish 6 days later than originally scheduled.

Dr. Terry Alford speaks about his upcoming biography of John Wilkes Booth: "Fortune's Fools."

Dr. Terry Alford’s upcoming biography, Fortune’s Fools is about the life of John Wilkes Booth, the famous actor and infamous assassin of the 16th president of the United States of America, Abraham Lincoln.

The Lincoln scholar has already written two books published by Oxford Press, made numerous television appearances, worked as a consultant for the 2007 film hit National Treasure 2, and helped found the NOVA Honors Program. He was recently awarded the 2010 Outstanding Faculty Award by the Commonwealth of Virginia. He is the only community college professor to ever receive the accolade.

Booth was apparently the Brad Pitt of his day and earned $20,000 income for acting alone in 1864. Only six months before he would take Lincoln’s life, he performed to a crowd of 2,000 for New York’s elite in Julius Caesar at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York City. Still, Booth could not escape the feelings of self reproach that increased as the Civil War deteriorated.

Booth lived in a rural community outside of Baltimore, Md. A Confederate sympathizer, Booth became unhinged at the capture of Richmond, Va., on March 25, 1865. Alford’s biography traces the tragedy of Lincoln’s murder through the lens of Booth’s experience, so the reader knows the events chronologically as Booth would. The novel also lacks a Lincoln deathbed scene, which — in the words of Alford — “has been done 500 times before.”

What makes Fortune’s Fools different from other books on the same topic is the humanity and color in each individual character. For specific details, Alford researches in a variety of places contain only parts of the story of Lincoln’s assassination.

Alford fits those pieces together to create a full picture, and much of what is in the book comes from firsthand eyewitness testimonies of people who witnessed the murder of Lincoln.

“That’s what takes so long, is finding all these facts and determining what’s credible,” Alford told the NOVA audience of 23 students and faculty. “Newspaper articles are good sources. However, people lie today like they did back then.”

There was a little-known connection between Booth and Lincoln. The medium Nettie Colburn Maynard who conducted the White House séances was also a friend of Booth. When her friend said that Lincoln should be shot, Maynard warned Lincoln that he should beware of crazy people who might want to do him harm in the capital. Later, a senator gave Lincoln a similar warning, and Lincoln replied, “That’s what I have been hearing.”

The biography is scheduled to be released by Oxford Press in 2011. Alford teaches history at the Annandale campus.

Holocaust Survivor Regina Spiegel speaks to a group at the Woodbridge Campus about her experiences during the Second World War.

“Everything seemed to be going my way,” Regina Spiegel recently told the large audience at the theater at the NOVA Woodbridge campus. The Polish winter was her biggest complaint in life. The topic turned serious as the guest speaker talked of her experience as a survivor of the death camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz on April 8.

She remembered the exact date that the German army attacked her village in Radom, Poland: Sept. 1, 1939. The building shook with the force of the army. Spiegel ran from her home, where her mother, Brandla, was preparing a traditional Shabbat dinner, to see what was happening.

“All of a sudden, I saw something I couldn’t imagine. They dragged an old man from his beard behind a truck. I was 13, but I grew up fast because I knew we were in trouble.”

Spiegel listed the tyrannical actions Hitler used. Jewish children were prohibited from going to school, families were required to give up valuables, workers were prohibited from jobs and banks closed all accounts held by Jews and seized their assets.

It was the children who suffered the most and were the first to be eliminated. They were the largest group of victims because they were largely of no use to the Nazis. Children got sick. Children could not perform heavy labor.

Within three days of their arrival, the Nazis ordered Jews moved to what they termed “a Jewish neighborhood.” Spiegel’s family was forced into the Radom ghetto.

“They took barbed wire, put guards in front, and made all the Jews go in. Within weeks the starvation got so bad,” Spiegel recalled. “It was unreal.”

Two families were assigned to a little room. Spiegel had a big family. It was so crowded that there was not enough room for each person to lay down when it was time to sleep.

Those were not the only changes to her once charmed life. There was the armband, a white band with the Star of David. She had always been proud of the Star of David, but now its meaning was twisted into something she was supposed to feel ashamed of.

Spiegel’s mother told her to flee to her sister Rozia Spiegel’s town in Pionki, about 30 kilometers away.

“Why me?” Spiegel argued. However, there was no arguing with her mother.

“I want to tell you, all the years in the camps, I never forgave myself for not saying goodbye… So I always encourage, do that, because you don’t want to go around with something like this in your head,” Spiegel advised her listeners.

Her sister was a dentist in a farming community. She was not wealthy, although she made a decent living. When the Germans invaded, things changed. Because farmers sold food, a commodity high in demand in wartime, their fortunes improved.

The farmers began going to the dentist. It was there that Rozia provided free service to one farmer in exchange for mediating between her and a Polish guard at Spiegel’s camp in Radom so that she could bribe him to let Spiegel escape. The bribe worked.

Those who could get into a labor camp making munitions for the Nazi army had a chance at surviving. So, that is what Spiegel’s sister did. Once again coming to the aid of her little sister, she arranged for falsified documents to be drawn up to state that Spiegel, then 14, was 16 years of age.

Meanwhile, Spiegel’s sister had an 18-month-old baby that she sent to live with a Polish woman thinking that he would be safe. When Spiegel’s nephew was almost two years of age, the Polish woman caring for him turned the baby into a Gestapo office and told the officials that she was not the mother.

Unwilling to deny her child and allow him to be put to death, Spiegel’s sister confessed that it was true. She and the child were to be sent away in a cattle car. Before she could be sent away, she ran with the child. But they were both shot in the back while attempting to flee.

At this time, Spiegel met Sam Spiegel. It was he who looked after her, made sure that she stayed in line, obeyed the rules and comforted her. If someone called in sick to work, then that person was hanged so that workers knew what would happen to them if they faked being sick in order to avoid work.

The day eventually came when Spiegel was transported to Treblinka, a large concentration camp. Around 900,000 people died there, most within days of their arrival. The ironic thing was that Spiegel and the others from her village had been convinced to voluntarily go to Treblinka. The camp officials said that it was better than the slave labor camp they lived in.

They were told that Treblinka had a school, a hospital and that they would be fed. It was true that Treblinka was not the worst labor camp. There, they did receive a little bit of food. If the kitchen cook knew a person she would dig a little deeper in the pot and give a piece of potato. Spiegel’s stay in Treblinka lasted until 1944. Then she was moved to Auschwitz.

When she arrived in Auschwitz, the train doors were opened as German soldiers yelled, “Aus, aus! Marchen!”

Spiegel understood these words, “Out, out! Move it!” because of their similarity between German and Yiddish.

Sam Spiegel understood more than Regina Spiegel. He perceived what was going on. He turned to her and said, “If we ever get out of here, meet me in my home town.”

She replied, “Why yours and not mine?” Spiegel still had it in mind to return home and to tell her mother that she had been wrong. She would never see her mother again.

New arrivals were forced to strip and to give up every picture and possession that they had. Then they were forced to shower. Spiegel was fortunate. She emerged from her shower with her head shaved bald. Most new arrivals did not emerge at all — carbon monoxide gas came out instead of water in their showers.

Here, Spiegel’s sole possession consisted of the one set of striped clothes that she had to wear and a thin blanket. About Auschwitz Regina said, “That place was indescribable. The guards checked role twice a day as if obsessed with us running away. But nobody ran from Auschwitz.” She stayed there for about five weeks, though she is not completely sure. One lost a sense of time there.

One day her friend, Astusha, was feeling very bleak. Spiegel said to her, “Look, the sun is shining. Maybe [Hitler] isn’t so powerful as he thinks. The sun is shining, and he can’t close up the sky.”

After Auschwitz, Spiegel was sent to Bergen-Belsen.

Bergen-Belsen was an altogether different kind of hell, named after the town in which it was built. This was the prison in which Anne Frank and her sister Margot perished shortly before its liberation by the British army. There was practically nothing to eat, only whatever was found on the ground. Spiegel was then to be sent to Dachau concentration camp in Germany.

It was April 20, 1945, and the German army knew that their reign was nearing its end. The liberation armies were moving across Europe. Spiegel remembers one of the guards saying that the prisoners should be happy as they boarded the trains. It was Hitler’s birthday, and the prisoners were going to be given a piece of bread. At that moment, the whole sky turned black. The allies had dropped a couple of bombs on the trains that they were going to board.

“Thank God, they were not too accurate,” Spiegel stated. The trains were overturned, and whoever was able to move ran to the woods.

The allied soldiers who dropped the bombs sat at the edge of the woods thinking that German sharpshooters were hiding there.

“You see, we were 4,000 women. So no matter how quiet you try to be, 4,000 women are not gonna be so quiet,” Spiegel said, and a soft chuck rippled through her audience.

Eventually a few of them exited their hiding place and were told that the war was over. Spiegel bled from a shrapnel wound to the head. The women were invited to “shoot up some Germans.” But she could never shoot someone because they were German. “That is not our way,” she stated to NOVA students.

Her voice quaked with sorrow as she lamented that she will never know why Hitler chose to kill her family, a wonderful mother, her beloved father, her sisters and her brothers. Two brothers did manage to survive.

Spiegel works at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

Denise Chong reads excerpts from her book, Egg on Mao.

Canadian author Denise Chong spoke about her most recent book Egg on Mao at the Annandale campus on the afternoon of April 8.

Her book follows the life of one of three persons, who during the Tiananmen Square student sit-in in Beijing, China in 1989, threw eggs filled with paint at the giant portrait of Chairman Mao Zedong in the Square. They were subsequently arrested, termed vandals and counter-revolutionary reactionaries, and sentenced to various terms in prison, from 16 years to life.

In speaking about her book, Chong related how she came to research and write it over the course of three years. She also read three excerpts from the volume.

Chong first began thinking of this book in 2006 when an editor came to her about the recent arrival of Lu Decheng, who was one of the perpetrators who had recently been granted political asylum in Canada. She, along with many other journalists, interviewed Lu in Toronto.

Chong became interested in writing the book and mulled over what type of book it should be. Though interested in human rights, she decided not to make direct mention of that subject.

She asked herself what is a moral being and what causes one to act. A moral act included one of defiance in trying to attain certain rights for the general good and the good of the country, such as freedom and democracy in Communist China, with grave repercussions possible. She decided to relate Lu’s life to see how he arrived at his moral act, also relating the repercussions of that act.

In her research, Chong interviewed Lu for days at a time and visited China in 2007, including visits to Beijing and Lu’s home town of Liuyang in the Hunan province.

During her visit to China, she took pains not to be caught doing research on her Tiananmen Square book, a forbidden topic in that country. She was continually alert to possibly being followed and carried no cell phone, which could have been traced to find her whereabouts.

She also had a story to fall back upon if questioned since she was also doing research on another topic, for which she had documentation available.

Chong’s book begins after the three had thrown all their eggs at the Mao portrait and ends with the throwing of the eggs. In between, the chapters alternate between the history of Lu’s family through several generations, his life before traveling to Tiananmen Square and much of his life after the eggs were thrown, including his time in prison. These chapters are interesting, giving a depiction of life in rural Communist China and of Lu’s life in prison and afterwards (the prison life being not quite as onerous as one might suspect for a political prisoner).

Before the egg throwing, Lu was a bus mechanic in the hinterlands far from Beijing. He had limited education and was not a member of the intelligentsia but was still interested in personal and political freedom.

Chong answered questions after her talk.  Several of the questions related to whether she was actually being followed during her China visit. She stated that she was not sure but nothing overt had occurred. She was also asked whether she had suffered any repercussions about the book’s publication, in which she had not.

Chong has written two previous books, the family memoir The Concubine’s Children (1994), a Canadian bestseller, and The Girl in the Picture (2000), about a napalmed girl in Vietnam after the war.

Egg on Mao is available at book stores and online with a retail price of $26. The book may also be found at nearby libraries.

Hamilton fired two shots from a distance of no more than six feet at the professor. His shots missed. As he attempted to reload his rifle, it malfunctioned.

A campus police officer quickly called in a report of shots fired to the Prince William County Police Department. Campus and county police arrived less than a minute later. Shortly after that, police entered the Seefeldt Building, encountered the suspected shooter and arrested him.

After the first report of shots fired it took 15 minutes for the first alert to reach students. That was only via a computer pop-up alert. Notifications via text messages, display screens in the hallways and automated phone alerts took up to 40 minutes.

William Flagler, the director of Emergency Planning at NOVA, insisted in a telephone interview that is not a fair measure of alert time and that it should be measured from when he was able to establish an emergency operations center. From the time Flagler was first notified, it took nine minutes for the first alert to be sent out.

Flagler said the bulk of the time it took to send out the message was spent verifying the information.

“We don’t want to send out a message in one minute to make sure you guys are safe, so the next time something happens you guys don’t say, ‘Oh, this is another false alarm,’” said Flagler.

The report, called the Woodbridge Shooting After Incident Review, stated that NOVA’s police chief had been notified that a shooter had been apprehended before the first message was sent. It was seven minutes later when an alert was sent out.

The message that was sent at the time still aired on the side of caution. It simply read, “Shelter In Place Until Further Notice. There is an emergency on campus.”

According to the report, it took five minutes from the time notification was requested until the actual alert was sent out. The report noted that there was no pre-approved language for such an incident and that having it could improve notification times.

Flagler took issue with the language in the report he authored. He said that the wording for an alert already existed; it just was not in the system. Still, the report criticized some messages for being “vague and not timely.”

Use of other communication took longer than the computerized alerts. It was 20 minutes after the shooting that the first text message was sent out telling recipients to stay in place and that there was an emergency on campus.

It took 40 minutes for phone messages to be sent to the classroom telephones. This happened after it was determined that the Woodbridge campus had not done so earlier. Those tasked with sending the message were either sheltered in place or apprehending and arresting the shooter.

Searching and clearing the campus for additional shooters or potential bombs was complicated by the fact that police lacked floor plans and keys for many rooms. Each office, classroom and closet had to be searched. It took three hours to clear each room and then escort students, faculty and staff to a designated area.

Further complicating the matter was that police had limited access to the police station. This made retrieval of the needed keys, blueprints and floor plans more difficult.

This was despite an earlier report prepared for Virginia’s community colleges after the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings urging that such material be prepared for just such an event.

Many of the systems put in place for an emergency were not utilized. The designated emergency operations room was never used, which the report said reduced access to computers, phones and news channels.

The report also said there was limited access to the security-camera system. Flagler said this was because only certain people had access to the video for security reasons. Since much of the team was in Annandale, the report noted this hampered the overall knowledge of the situation.

While the after-incident report did have many critiques for what went wrong, there were some nuggets of what went right. It was noted that police were able to respond to the situation quickly because of training they had received, in part due to beefed up training recommended in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings.

Even though the initial people who were tasked with sending alerts were unable to do so, the report credits implementation of an alert system that can be activated remotely with helping in the outcome.

Some recommendations contained in the after-incident report have already been implemented. For instance, there is now existing language in the system for emergencies. Additionally, NOVA has a system to track reports of potentially disturbed students, although Hamilton was not in the system.

Janet Giles of JobZone, which holds job fairs throughout much of Virginia, has reported an increase in the number of job fairs attendees and a decrease in the number of companies that exhibit. She also said she’s been seeing people who have never lost their job before.

“You really can’t put a number on it,” remarked Mel “Kia” Ames of the IRS. “We’ve been getting applicants we wouldn’t have gotten before because of [the economy].”

Tameka Shephard of GEICO Insurance said at an earlier job fair that the company has been receiving applications from different fields than their usual pool of applicants and also from a wider range of salaries. GEICO is a regular at recruitment events in Northern Virginia thanks to corporate headquarters located in Chevy Chase and offices in Washington and Fredericksburg.

Financial talk show hosts have said that recently more jobs have opened up since the recession began. However, it’s still higher than it was last year or the year prior.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the nation’s unemployment rate in March 2010 was 9.7 percent, compared to 8.5 percent in March the previous year and 5.1 percent the year before that.

For students who are about to graduate and enter the workforce full-time, the prospects of finding a job in the current economic climate with so much competition for each available position can seem daunting and discouraging.

“It’s a zoo,” said Lisa Lee of Technology Associates of a job fair she attended. A colleague who had been manning the company’s exhibit with her had to go back to the office to get more company literature because they ran out in less than an hour.

Keith A. Evans, a representative of Stratford University, said a lot of what he’s seen is people looking for work only to discover the work has changed –– industries are dying and new ones are springing up –– and there are now different types of jobs that need to be filled.

To help college students increase their chances of finding a job now or when they graduate, Northern Virginia Community College is holding job fairs before the semester ends.

A job and internship fair will be held on the Alexandria campus in the Schlesinger Center Hall on April 20 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Businesses that plan to attend include BB&T, the YMCA, AlliedBarton Security Services, Arlington County government and police department and Bright Horizon childcare centers.

A job fair on the Woodbridge campus is scheduled for April 28 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. For more information, contact the campus career services counselor, Dennis Sullivan, at dsullivan@nvcc.edu.

The college has a career events calendar, however it’s not up to date. As of April 16, it only had three events in February and early March listed, nothing current. Additionally, NOVA’s main events calendar did not mention either upcoming job fair as of press time.

NOVA has a page on its web site for jobs with the college (nvcc.edu/depts/hr/employment.htm).NOVA has a page on its web site (NVCC.edu) for jobs with the college at nvcc.edu under the link “Jobs at NOVA.” Unfortunately, the link to review the procedures for applying for a position and the link for other employers to post job and internship opportunities for students are both broken.
at the bottom of the page.
The career events calendar may be found at nvcc.edu/current-students/career-services/events/index.html. The college-wide events calendar may be found at nvcc.edu/calendar.

Moreover, JobZoneOnline.com has tips for jobseekers planning to attend job fairs.

Time will tell what the unemployment rate will be in March 2011, lower or higher.