When I began college in the fall of 1969, the college made it very clear that it considered itself to be “in loco parentis,” the Latin phrase indicating that the college took its role as a “substitute parent” seriously. There were rules about almost everything to do with student life, and the college provided “bed making” services by staff, which meant that staff members had keys to our rooms and were in them virtually every day.

This meant, of course, that they also watched for signs of troubled students and reported all such signs to the dean of students immediately. While some students chafed under these restrictions, most just accepted them as a fact of life.

Colleges today, for the most part, reject the notion that they have any serious role as substitute parents or guardians. They do so not only by choice, but because this is what students, parents and the courts demand. Decades of court cases have affirmed that students do have privacy rights and that colleges risk legal action if they violate these.

In my experience, many parents don’t want their children to be subject to constant monitoring by school authorities and will support students who challenge such activities. I suspect that some of this is fear that the authorities might find the students violating drug or alcohol laws or, perhaps, it is just the heightened sense of personal autonomy that is now common.

It is, of course, within this changed context that the dangers of mass violence such as occurred at Virginia Tech must be understood. Last week, a number of media commentators launched what appears to be an attack on university administrators for not exercising more supervision of resident students. But the problem is that universities can seriously monitor students so that they could, perhaps, avoid the kind of tragedy that occurred at Virginia Tech, only if students and their parents are willing to accept such supervision. I rather doubt that this will ever again be the case.

As we have learned time and again in recent years, a committed terrorist, and I would include the Virginia Tech killer in this category, is enormously difficult to stop, particularly if he is willing to sacrifice his own life to kill others. Large universities are particularly vulnerable to these sort of attacks because of their size and complexity.

How far are students and parents willing to go for increased campus security? Are they willing to be searched as they enter buildings on the model of airport security? Are they willing to have their dormitory rooms searched randomly and without notice, as is done with baggage at airports? Are they willing to waive all privacy rights when they visit campus health officials? Unfortunately, my suspicion is that only by such severe measures can we significantly reduce the risks of the sort of mass killing that occurred at Virginia Tech.

As is so often the case today, college campuses mirror the nation. Just as there continue to be homicidal individuals in society at large, such individuals can also be found on campus. Unless we are willing to sacrifice some degree of student freedom and roll back the clock 50 years or more, such incidents will continue to occur.

Until parents and students are willing to embrace such changes the price of freedom on campus will, alas, be insecurity. That is the world in which we live.