As Virginia Tech struggles to begin a healing process in the wake of Monday's deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history, college and university officials across the nation are faced with the difficult task of determining how their institutions measure up to security challenges.

In the days ahead, it is likely that findings will confirm initial speculation that Virginia Tech officials made serious errors in judgment after first becoming aware that a gunman was loose on the Blacksburg, Va., campus.

Other colleges and universities must use lessons stemming from the Virginia Tech bloodbath to try to close whatever gaps might exist in their emergency-alert and other security procedures.

For Virginia Tech, it is likely that Monday's tragedy marked the beginning of the end of some campus careers, especially of those responsible for emergency preparedness and emergency response — perhaps even some top university officials.

Despite the challenges, the university had the capability of making students and faculty less vulnerable to what occurred, if campus officials had made the right decisions immediately upon learning of the first deadly attack at 7:15 a.m. Instead, the campus community beyond the site of the initial shootings — a dormitory — was not quickly informed that danger on the campus existed.

By the time a general alert finally was issued about two hours later, carnage at a classroom building already was under way.

In this era of beefed-up security awareness and emergency-response planning, it is puzzling how Virginia Tech could have been so weak on decision making amid the uncertain circumstances Monday morning.

Catherine Bath, executive director of Security on Campus, a King of Prussia, Pa., group that promotes safety at colleges, aptly summed up the Virginia Tech situation as it should have occurred.

"After the first shot, the campus should have been locked down and the students notified by text message on their cell phones about the danger," she said.

She said the carnage "did not have to be this bad if they (Virginia Tech) had a proper warning system in place. Shame on them."

Bath recommends that all campuses in the country implement a system of emergency text messaging — an asset that she describes as easy and not expensive.

Nevertheless, even Bath would admit that no campus ever can be 100 percent secure. The openness of most campuses prevents that, despite the multiple layers of security, including locked residence halls, armed police forces and video surveillance, in place at many campuses.

At the heart of such security measures are people — people capable of erring on the side of caution, rather than in a way that would open the door to monumental tragedy.

Unfortunately, a decision to err on the side of caution wasn't in place at Virginia Tech Monday morning.

Some of the answers and explanations given by Virginia Tech officials, including campus police chief Wendell Flinchum and university president Charles Steger, conveyed an attitude built on assumption, despite officials not having had any positive evidence from the first two shootings indicating that they were an isolated incident — or that there was only one shooter. The fact was, they didn't have a suspect in custody and didn't have a basis for making any assumptions whatsoever.

That initial reaction became the key to the horrific scope of violence that allowed the shooter, Cho Seung-Hui, 23, a Virginia Tech senior from South Korea who had lived in Virgnia for 14 years, to enter a classroom building and carry out the rest of his deadly rampage.

Cho Seung-Hui thus joined a list of notorious mass killers that includes Charles Whitman, who opened fire with a rifle from the 28th-floor observation deck at the University of Texas at Austin in 1966, killing 16 people. Among the other names on that list are Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, two teenagers who killed 12 fellow students and a teacher at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colo., on April 20, 1999.

In reaction to what occurred at Virginia Tech, Frank DeAngelis, Columbine High principal, said, "You're hoping there would be lessons learned from Columbine, but that's obviously not the case."

Meanwhile, time will tell whether the troubling observation of one Virginia Tech student will be verified.

"I think the university has blood on their hands because of their lack of action after the first incident," said Billy Bason, 18, who lives in the dormitory where the first of Monday's shootings took place.

Regardless, the observation of Steven Levy in the May 3, 1999, issue of Newsweek magazine that "the Columbine High killers fed on a culture of violence that isn't about to change" is as true now as it was then.

That's why college and university officials across the land — as well as high schools and other schools — are today reassessing their security and readiness — and hoping and praying that their institutions will never be victimized by horror like that which consumed Virginia Tech on Monday.