Ohio State University hopes new hiring policies will boost campus safety

From The Columbus Dispatch: Prompted by a shooting at Ohio State University in March that left two dead and one wounded, university officials plan to change several hiring policies by early next year. The recommended changes were announced in a campus-wide e-mail from Larry Lewellen, OSU's vice president of human resources. Lewellen did not mention the shooting incident in the e-mail, but in an interview, he says the shooting helped drive the discussion among university leaders. Two of the five recommended changes deal with background checks: All people hired will go through background checks before starting work, and one company will do all the checks. On March 9, fired maintenance worker Nathaniel Brown shot two of his bosses and then killed himself in a campus building. Afterward, officials said they would not have hired Brown had they known he served five years in prison for receiving stolen property.