At the University of Chicago, the third Monday in November began with an hour of violence. Around 12:30 a.m., an assailant fired a shot at a staff member who was walking on the campus. At 1:15, a group of men robbed two female students on a nearby street. Several blocks away, just before 1:30, Amadou Cisse, a doctoral student, was shot and killed while walking to his home, a half block from the campus.
Minutes later, administrators discussed the situation by telephone. Like many colleges, Chicago has a brand-new emergency-notification system, installed after the massacre at Virginia Tech last April. The system can quickly send short text and e-mail messages, yet officials did not discuss using it in the middle of the night, said Henry S. Webber, the university’s vice president for community and government affairs.