The recent events at Virginia Tech reinforce the idea that nothing is more fundamental for college leaders to address than campus security and safety. After the tears, the makeshift memorials, and the intensely painful series of funerals, higher education must come to grips with the fact that it has just had its own September 11. Assessing and acting upon potential dangers on a campus are fraught with complex issues that go to the heart of what it means to be in an academic environment, particularly where federal law guards student privacy to an extent that excludes the real-world implications of that law. The question that trustees, along with faculty members, students, and parents must now ask seem endless, and the answers obscure. For trustees, the questions are both the critical starting point and the foundation for all future discussions. And no questions are more difficult than those that deal with the classic conflict between safety and the privacy right of students. In this article, the author discusses what trustees need to do in order to assure safety within the colleges. Most importantly, she asserts, they must develop a plan for immediate communication of all known information, with updates as more facts become known.