The Nation
Will Kirk's death be just the first? Colleges are unprepared for threats like Charlie's killing, experts say
By Joanna Slater, Susan Svrluga & Brianna Tucker The Washington Post
Published Sept. 12, 2025
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For Wednesday's midday event at Utah Valley University, conservative activist Charlie Kirk followed a formula he had used many times on college campuses.
Students flowed into a courtyard for a large outdoor gathering featuring a wide-ranging, sometimes raucous political debate, with security arrangements coordinated in advance between Kirk's team and campus police.
With a single shot fired from the rooftop of a building more than 100 yards away, it all came crashing down.
Kirk's targeted killing added to an upsurge in political violence in the United States and represents a startling new type of risk for colleges and universities.
College campuses are all too familiar with the possibility of gun violence and have well-established protocols for responding to mass shootings. But experts struggled to recall any event in recent decades where a campus speaker at a university appears to have been deliberately targeted and killed.
Security experts said that the way Kirk was killed - a shot fired from a high-powered rifle from a considerable distance - is the type of danger normally only faced by heads of state and is difficult to prevent without Secret Service-type sweeps.
That kind of heavy security presence, along with elements such as entry checks, metal detectors and bag searches, would also run counter to the ideals of American higher education, which strive to keep communal spaces as open to the public as possible.
Colleges and universities will ramp up security planning and precautions after Wednesday's shooting, said Ed Davis, a former Boston police commissioner who runs his own security consultancy and counts educational institutions as his clients. At the same time, he said, they "don't want to be an armed camp."
As of midday Thursday, the manhunt to apprehend the shooter was still underway and the culprit's identity and motivation remained unknown. Video from the event showed a person running across the roof of a multistory building overlooking the event site seconds after Kirk was fatally shot.
A handful of metal crowd-control barriers had separated the tent where Kirk spoke from the estimated 3,000 attendees, who flowed into a terraced open courtyard without any security checks, three students told The Washington Post.
Utah Valley University Police Chief Jeff Long said six officers were assigned to the event. Some were in the crowd wearing plain clothes, he said, while others were visible in photos before the shooting on an elevated walkway directly behind Kirk's tent.
"We're devastated by what happened," Long told reporters Wednesday. "You try to get your bases covered and unfortunately today we didn't." Long added that he had coordinated arrangements in advance with Kirk's lead security staffer.
Videos and photographs showed the roof of the building directly behind Kirk was cordoned off and staffed by uniformed officers. There was little security presence immediately apparent beyond Kirk's immediate vicinity.
The courtyard is surrounded on all sides by higher buildings, featuring tiered roofing in many places accessible to pedestrians and offering clear vantage points into the courtyard.
The event was supposed to be the kickoff for a series of fall-semester campus visits as part of Kirk's "American Comeback Tour." Long noted that Kirk's team has experience organizing events across the country. "They're very comfortable on campuses," Long said.
At least two men in black shirts who appear to be members of Kirk's private security detail are visible around him in photos from the event. Their primary duty would be to protect Kirk from nearby threats, experts said.
"If somebody drew a handgun or something like that, these guys could hopefully engage the threat," said Greg Shaffer, a retired FBI special agent and former security director for Turning Point USA, the organization Kirk founded. "The problem was that this shot came from a distance."
A countersniper could react to such a threat, Shaffer said, but that would be virtually impossible to arrange through college campus police. "Unless you're president of the United States, you just don't get that kind of protection," he said.
Shaffer provided security for Kirk for seven years until 2022. In that time period, the typical attendance at Kirk's events swelled from a few hundred into the thousands, Shaffer said.
Kirk often had a five-person security detail during campus events and a security staffer would meet with the campus police chief ahead of time to review preparations and emergency evacuation procedures, Shaffer said. Kirk frequently received threats via email and social media, he added, and if they seemed credible, his team would file a police report.
The openness of Wednesday's event was part of its appeal: the local chapter of Kirk's organization posted a video showing potential attendees exactly how to get there from the student center - by proceeding directly from the humming food court through a double set of doors out to the courtyard. It showed where Kirk would be speaking at the bottom of the bowl-like outdoor area marked with a red arrow.
On Wednesday, as Kirk fielded a question about mass shootings, there came a moment of terrifying violence. In videos posted on social media, students in the crowd - a generation that grew up with school lockdown drills and run-hide-fight messaging - fled.
S. Daniel Carter, a campus safety consultant, rejected the idea that campuses should restrict entry and intensify security checks in response to the shooting.
"The essence of American higher education is the open campus," Carter said. "We're not going to lock everything down."
Carter, who said that his expertise is not in large-event security, said he believes that the only type of security he could imagine being effective in such an open environment would be the scrutiny that the Secret Service brings before a presidential or vice-presidential visit to a campus.
"There might be security lessons for the people who provide event security: Closer looks at rooftops, buildings with lines of sight," he said, speaking of private security teams who secure venues before a high-profile event. That's not something a campus police team would typically do, he said.
In smaller events at colleges, threats to speakers or events are not uncommon. Sometimes universities cancel speeches out of concern that campus police won't be able to ensure safety in the event of hostilities. That often sparks controversy, Carter said, and concerns about oppression and violation of the First Amendment.
Rodney Chatman, a leader with the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators, said colleges have been hosting high-profile speakers for many years but that people would be considering best practices with heightened intensity now. Those include robust threat assessments. Chatman said it's important for schools not to retreat and shut down opportunities for students to hear new ideas.
Davis, the former Boston police commissioner, said outdoor events present particular risks. "An outside event is inherently dangerous," he said. "Moving these events inside is probably a very logical thing to do in this environment."
Melvin Key, the chief executive of MVP Protective Services, said that properly securing an outdoor event like Kirk's on Wednesday would cost close to $1 million, including expensive measures such as a crowd-management company to control entry, bag searches, bulletproof panels around the stage and a careful review of the lines of sight.
On Thursday morning, Key's firm received calls from several companies that had seen what happened to Kirk and were interested in private security for executives. He said they were asking questions such as, "‘We see how the culture is now for high-profile people. What do we do? How do we secure ourselves?'"
By midday, Key said he had signed three new contracts.
Wednesday's shooting, like other shootings, could also inflame the national debate over whether people should be allowed to carry weapons on college campuses. State law in Utah changed in May, allowing people 18 and older with a concealed-weapon permit to openly carry a gun on campus.
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