What’s next, professors teaching behind walls of bullet proof glass?

Tricia Bishop of the Baltimore Sun reports.

Eastern Shore professors to get bulletproof whiteboards

Calling “campus violence a reality” to prepare for, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore announced plans Thursday to spend $60,000 on the Clark Kent of teacher supplies: an innocuous-looking white board that can stop bullets.

The high-tech tablet — which hangs on a hook, measures 18 by 20 inches and comes in pink, blue and green — can be used as a personal shield for professors under attack, according to the company that makes it, and a portable writing pad in quieter times.

“It needs to be a great whiteboard and a useful tool so that it doesn’t get hidden in the closet,” said maker George Tunis. His Worcester County company Hardwire LLC starting out making military armor, then adapted it for the classroom after the tragic shootings last year at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where 20 children and six adults were killed.

“When Sandy Hook happened … a light bulb went off that it’s really the teachers and administrators” who need protection, the father of two said. “Those brave souls were trying to close the gap and get to the shooter and stop him, but they didn’t have anything that could stop the bullets along the way.”

High-profile incidents like Sandy Hook and the 2007 mass murder of 32 people at Virginia Tech have led campuses across the country to focus on safety.

They’ve developed assessment teams to evaluate potential threats and revamped policies to tighten security. And in Maryland next week, campus police from nine schools are taking a training course in recognizing mental illness to help them defuse potentially dangerous situations.

Body armor is the latest effort, security experts said.

“There are several vendors that have this type of personalized armor,” said S. Daniel Carter, a national campus safety advocate. “It’s not something that is in much great use.”