Just after 10 this morning I got an email from the campus police, reporting that a gunshot had been heard in or around one of the dorms at 6:15 this morning. One student – who had been videotaping himself – had caught it on tape, and the police confirmed that it was indeed a gunshot. A second person also reported the sound.
It’s now nearly 3 p.m., and though I’ve been checking the university’s emergency page, there’s been no further information from the police. Probably everything will be just fine. But it’s disquieting that the initial safety alert came nearly four hours after the incident, and that updates are so slow in coming. I don’t live on campus and I spent the day working at home, but my neighborhood is a five-minute walk from the area where the gunshot was reported.
More to the point, I worry that someone obviously has a gun on campus, despite their being banned in all campus buildings. I worry even more that this person has ammo and chose to use it. I can’t think of any benign explanation.
I also worry that Residence Life staff were going door to door, checking on dorm residents. What on earth is an unarmed R.A. supposed to do if she or he actually finds a student with a gun?
Update, 2/10/11, 4:30 p.m.: I spoke with a police officer at the OU men’s basketball game last night. (There were two officers posted very prominently – which I hadn’t noticed at past games.) He told me that while they had no further information, whoever created the noise wasn’t likely to do it again just for kicks. He further said it was still possible the sound came from some source other than a gun. All very reassuring – but then he casually mentioned having taken guns away from people on Court Street, where students go bar-hopping, on numerous occasions. So much for feeling safe again!
Patron cat of Kittywampus (1985-2001)
I was an RA at NIU when we had our major shooting incident in 2008. Our senior staff (grads and professionals) manned the lobbies until security could be spared to cover the halls, but as undergrads we were told to go to our rooms and keep safe. I can’t imagine they would send RA staff door-to-door in that kind of situation; the job requirements just don’t allow for it. It would be very obviously illegal and in violation of so much of what StuAff professionals should know.
Of course it’s a little bit different if it was in a hall itself, but when we had a similar incident the following year in a hall that wasn’t mine, the staff weren’t allowed to do much of anything until they’d figured out who it was. They could talk to a resident who came to them, but that was about it. Once they’d gotten the situation under control, they did the rounds where they talked to anyone they saw.
We’d get called to midnight meetings in emergency situations on a regular basis, but they would never have asked us to blatantly put our lives on the line.
It’s unfortunate that campuses have to have a major incident before they get their emergency notification under control. You’d think they’d learn by now, but it seems like every time something happens in a new place it’s like they’d never heard of it before. Yes, you do need immediate notification in situations that present immediate threat, thanks. Yes, you do need to keep people updated on the status of those situations so they know whether it’s safe to go about their activities. It’s so frustrating when it doesn’t get done.
Anna – wow. That must have been a tremendously stressful time. I served as an RA back in the ’80s, and the biggest worry then (as today) was that a student might harm themselves. But that was before the Montreal shootings, at a time when we still had the illusion that college campuses – at least those not located in rough urban areas – were generally safe places.
It is reassuring to think that RA are *not* being sent out. I can’t imagine that the full-time staff people are really prepared, either, since no one really has experience with such a crisis.
In my ResLife…life…they wouldn’t have been expected to put themselves in danger, either, it’s just that the line between their own safety and resident safety is pushed a tiny bit further in the resident direction. Had the shooter entered our building they would have barricaded themselves in rooms, too. They directed traffic for probably five minutes before we had police on scene; I lived and worked in the hall that faced the building where the shooting took place, so we were Ground 0.5, and basically triage. The halls at further ends of campus probably relied a bit more on their professional staff for a bit longer, but not much–NIU has a fairly large full-time police force and we had city, county, and state cops on campus within twenty minutes. They were more doing things like locking outer doors and making sure injured people got in than they were patrolling or anything, and I’m not sure how much of that was volunteer, though I assume it leaned further in that direction than in the job description.
I’m pretty immersed in the memories of that whole thing today, with the 3rd anniversary on Monday. It’s rough to remember but getting easier.
That sounds so traumatic. I hope you’ve got good support through these next few days.
We don’t have a lot of local law enforcement to call upon. My little town is pretty isolated. It’s small. Many of the police officers have been called up with the reserves or national guard and sent to fight overseas, so they’re chronically short staffed. The local ER is small. Our first responders would be completely overwhelmed by a mass shooting. We would not be able to count on the support you had at NIU – not that first responders can mitigate all the harm, by any means.
My thoughts will be with you this weekend.
(I hit the thread cutoff point)
DeKalb only has about 40,000 people apart from the student body (and that’s about 25,000), it’s pretty rural, and the whole county has a little over 100,000, so it’s not a huge community, either. Most of our extra police came from the state force. In Illinois it’s one of the smaller college towns.
When I worked on a college campus, there were a string of muggings and sexual assaults. We always got the notifications hours and hours and sometimes even a day later, at which point they would do no good. So frustrating. But, it’s totally legal to have a gun on campus in South Carolina…
…whereas my university left me a voicemail as a “test message” to test their responsiveness to just such a situation. They even said that the message was supposed to arrive within a certain 15 minute window, and it did. Which would be great, if I still lived on or anywhere near that campus…which I don’t cause I GRADUATED 4 YEARS AGO.
Lol, I’m not actually irritated, better safe than sorry and all that, but I thought it was pretty funny.
Seems like a glitchy system is the rule rather than the exception. The phone notifications for my kids’ school works way better than this! Of course, they use it frequently! (We’re up to 11 “calamity days” and about an equal number of two-hour delays …)