NORTH COUNTY -- As news of Monday's shootings at Virginia Tech University reached North County's three college campuses, staff and students said they felt their schools were as prepared as possible for such an event.

"I feel totally safe on this campus with all the police we have and all the drills they do, but there's nothing you can do to prepare for something so completely unexpected," said Liz Sheets, a senior at Cal State San Marcos. "If someone is disgruntled, you're not going to stop them."

The reaction came after a gunman killed at least 32 people on campus in the worst mass shooting in the nation's history.

Officials at Cal State San Marcos and the region's two community colleges, Palomar College in San Marcos and MiraCosta College in Oceanside, said the loss of life in such a situation can be significantly reduced if effective communication and prevention measures are used.

Officials at all three schools said Monday that they have recently added "campus gunman" scenarios to their emergency plans, which previously focused primarily on earthquakes, fires, floods and terrorism.

They said schools across the nation have stepped up such preparations since a deadly 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado brought national attention to the issue.

North County students and officials interviewed Monday dismissed the notion of installing metal detectors at campus entrances or other attempts at preventing such tragedies, saying that loss of convenience and privacy would outweigh any potential benefits.

Officials at Palomar and MiraCosta said the possibility of a mass shooting is one of the main reasons that police officers at both community colleges have begun carrying firearms in the past few years. Cal State San Marcos police officers have carried guns since the university took over its current site in 1992.

"The key to dealing with such scenarios is effective communication and immediate response," said Robert Norcross, MiraCosta chief of police. "We don't want people just frantically running across campus, so we have a system to notify everyone by phone and e-mail as soon as possible."

Cal State San Marcos has a similar response system in place, according to Police Chief Ronald Hackenberg.

Students and professors in every room of every campus building would hear loudspeakers urging them to assume "lockdown" positions, which entail crouching down below windows and sitting still, said Hackenberg. There would also be notification by phone and e-mail.

Spreading the word would be more difficult at Palomar College, where the buildings are much older than MiraCosta or Cal State, and where most classrooms lack phones.

But Tom Plotts, Palomar's police chief, said Monday that Palomar plans to use some of the $694 million in bond money voters approved in November to install a new loudspeaker system and special locking devices for classrooms and other areas.

Locking doors and buildings are also key to the Cal State San Marcos gunman response plan, Hackenberg said, because locks prevent students from meandering into harm's way, while also preventing gunmen from moving freely between buildings.

"From campus dispatch in the police department, we have the power to lock down all of our buildings," said Hackenberg.

Norcross and Plotts said having armed officers at Palomar and MiraCosta will likely make a huge difference if a gunman ever attacks one of the campuses. Palomar officers began carrying guns in 2002, and MiraCosta officers started in 2006.

"We'll be able to eliminate the loss of lives much better than before," said Norcross, explaining that a key lesson from Columbine was attacking the shooter as soon as possible. "We'll be in much better position than when we had to wait for Oceanside police to show up with firearms."

All three police chiefs said metal detectors and similar attempts to prevent such tragedies are not considered feasible on college campuses for a variety of reasons. They said prevention would be much more likely to come from tips about a planned shooting than metal detectors.

Students interviewed Monday said they oppose metal detectors.

"I think metal detectors would make life a lot harder," said Ryan Valletta, a freshman from Sacramento who lives in the Cal State San Marcos dorms with 562 other students. "Everyone has laptops and it'd take forever to get into classrooms. We'd be more protected, but there are still ways for a shooter to get around a metal detector."

Ashley Sherry, a freshman from Orange County who lives in the dorms, was among a group of students who applauded the strong police presence on the Cal State San Marcos campus. Sherry said Monday's events scared her, but that it would take a lot more shootings to persuade her that metal detectors make sense.

"I wouldn't say that people are panicked, but we're scared because we know it could happen anywhere and that there is almost no way to prevent it," said Sherry. "But I don't want to feel like I can't trust anybody."

Contact staff writer David Garrick at (760) 761-4410 or dgarrick@nctimes.com.