Colleges reassess emergency plans

UCA shooting sparks attention to crisis response

By Amy Widner

LITTLE ROCK — Last month’s University of Central Arkansas drive-by shooting was a tragedy, but it was also an opportunity for colleges to take another look at campus safety.

“You always learn something any time a college has the awful misfortune of an incident like that,” said Brett Cooper, Williams Baptist College vice president for college relations. “It gives you something of a blueprint for how these things unfold and the best ways to deal with them. The conversation among our administration has been: What can be learned from it and what lessons arethere that can be applied to our own plan?”

The UCA shootings on Oct. 26 left two dead and one wounded. While it was not the kind of mass shooting that college administrators have feared and tried to prepare for since 33 people were killed by a lone student gunman at Virginia Tech last year, it did give school administrators a real-life glimpse intothe practicalities of an on-campus shooting.

Since Virginia Tech, when many argued that slow police response and a lack of communication led to greater loss of life, Arkansas universities have invested in training and communication technologies that target speed and communication. Because many schools have adopted similar plans and in some caseseven the same alert system as UCA, the shooting was a good source of information about what works and what doesn’t work, administrators said.

Harding University - Searcy

Craig Russell, Harding’s director of public safety, said the university’s emergency management committee met the day after the UCA shooting.

“We walked through what we knew about the UCA incident and went around the table kind of brainstorming about how we would deal with a similar situation at Harding if it were to ever occur,” Russellsaid. “It’s something we do kind of on a regular basis anyway. We did something similar after Virginia Tech. Incidents like this give every university the chance to examine their policies and the procedures they have in place and make sure they’re where they need to be.”

Russell has also been looking at blog postings from UCA students to see what students liked and didn’t like about the UCA’s response to the shootings.

The Harding Emergency Management Committee has existed for several years, and Harding has a text-message alert system that is open for faculty and students who sign up. They also have an internal e-mail system that they can use for mass alerts and a bell system that is in almost all classroom buildings. It is programed with different rings: severe weather, lock down and all clear.

They have a group-call system that enables them to call all the residence halls simultaneously, meaning emergency announcements can be made to all dorm managers at once. Russell said the system has been tested multiple times because of bad weather.

Harding does not have an on-campus police department because state law prohibits private universities from having them, Russell said. They do have a public safety department with some retired police officers and some armed security service personnel.

Russell said the UCA shooting highlighted some of the safety hot topics that campuses across the nation are considering. It’s all about communication and speed, Russell said, and the UCA shooting also made it clear that universities need to use varying media to alert students of emergencies.

“I think it revealed that relying on just a single means of emergency communication can be a mistake,” Russell said. “Using a number of different ways is important. That’s something UCA did, and even still they got some criticism because not everyone felt they were being reached.”

Keeping those elements in mind - speed and variety - Harding is looking into programs that could bring all of the university’s current alert systems together into one.

“What we’re trying to do, and what I think most colleges are doing, is to look for as many ways to communicate as possible and then make those many means of communication work as fast as you can possibly make them,” Russell said. “I don’t think there’s any perfect solution, because all college campuses and universities are different, but we’re all kind of working toward the same goals at least.”

Russell said another important lesson from the UCA shootings is that UCA did a good job of communicating with the community about the shooting. Harding also has a Web site where they could post frequent updates the way UCA officials did, and Russell said Harding’s campus TV station, radio station and general information hotline could also be used to get information to those outside the immediate Harding community.

Arkansas State University-Beebe

ASU-Beebe Chief of Police Mike Kindall said that since Virginia Tech, their focus has been training, establishing a mass alert system, strengthening their relationship with the Beebe Police Department and widening their police presence on campus.

ASU-Beebe has certified police officers who try to walk the campus as much as possible and make their presence known. Kindall said they participated in the first tactical training course designed specifically for campus police in addition to all the training they normally do. Kindall has been certified so that he can train others in campus safety techniques.

Kindall said ASU-Beebe police work well with Beebe and White County police and could coordinate efforts in an emergency situation. ASU-Beebe has activated a mass notification system, AlertXpress, the same system used by UCA. Unlike at UCA, however - where only key faculty and staff received the initial phone and e-mail alerts, while students received e-mails later - ASU-Beebe’s AlertXpress is open to faculty, staff and students, who can list an e-mail address where they want to be notified and two phone numbers where they would like to receive voice messages.

Giving students the option to list multiple contacts betters the chances the students willactually get the message and gives them the option to list a parent’s phone number or email as well, Kindall said.

The system has been up since the beginning of the semester, and Kindall said a little more than 1,000 people have signed up. They have tested the system to see if it can handle that many contacts and will conduct another test this month. AlertXpress also contacts the Beebe Police Department.

“I think [the lessons learned from the UCA shooting] showed we are going in the right direction,” Kindall said. “We use a lot of the same stuff as UCA. I think everything is there and in place, and we’re going to continue with our training and continue to develop our good working relationship with the Beebe Police Department.”

Looking forward, Kindall said they are considering intercom systems and cameras, among other things.

“We’re just trying to keep up with everything that’s out there,” Kindall said. “It’s kind of different right now.” Lyon College - Batesville

Charles Neal, information services director, has beenworking with administrators and security personnel on Lyon’s emergency-related technology. He emphasized Lyon’s emergency notification system and digital card access system in the dormitories.

Lyon’s mass alert system can notify students by text message and e-mail. Lyon students are required to provide contact information upon enrollment, and the college has alert information on file for all freshman and sophomore students. Upperclassmen, parents and anyone else interested can sign up for the alerts.

The system was set up over the summer and was first tested with a limited group in August. The whole group was tested in mid-October, and there are 450 contacts in the system, Neal said.

Also during the summer, Lyon installed a digital card access system in the dorms and science building. Students must scan their ID to pass through exterior and some interior doors. Neal said the college is looking into putting the scanners on more buildings. After the UCA shooting, residential staff and police officers had to physically man building entrances and exits to lock down the campus.

“In case we ever have an emergency,” Neal said, “we can lock down all the doors within just a few seconds.”

Lyon doesn’t have certified police officers because state law does not allow private universities to have on-campus police departments, but they have campus safety staff. Wallace Hightower is director of campus safety. He emphasized the relationship-building he and his staff have done with local police. Speed is key, he said, and he thinks that Lyon’s alert and access systems are strong in that area.

“The thing to note [at UCA] is that there was a police officer on the scene within a minute, but as these things go, that was too late,” Hightower said.

Hightower said UCA’s officers did a good job of developing emergency plans and practicing them and that it showed in their response to the shooting. He said Lyon College is doing the same thing.

University of Arkansas Community College at Batesville

UACCB Chancellor Deborah Frazier issued a press release Oct. 28 assuring students that the community college’s safety plan is continually under review. Copies of the plan were distributed to students the day after the UCA shooting.

UACCB’s alert system was activated Monday (by coincidence and not as a direct result of the UCA shooting). Students, faculty and staff can sign up for text message and e-mail alerts. Also this semester, the college started charging a $1.50 security fee, which has allowed them to contract with a campus security service.

Frazier also emphasized that UACCB has a good working relationship with the Independence County Sheriff’s Office and that the college is in theprocess of purchasing a siren system.

Frazier said one of the major things UACCB officials took away from the UCA shooting was how well UCA officials communicated with the public by continually posting informa-tion on the UCA Web site and holding frequent press conferences.

“We watched how they publicly published the information and what an outstanding job they did,” Frazier said. “We looked at how we could do some of the same things here and what we might have to do differently to get the information out there.

“We’re a community college with a lot of commuters and long tentacles into the surrounding community. A lot of people would be interested if something like that happened at UACCB, and we want to be able to get that information to them.”

In addition to communicating well with the public, Frazier said UCA’s campus police, city police, campus administration and others did a good job of communicating among themselves, demonstrating how important such cooperation can be.

Frazier said the events at UCA were yet another unfortunate wake-up call.

“In a rural area, we kind of lull ourselves into thinkingwe’re safe and those things only happen someplace else,” Frazier said. “We’ve really realized that it can happen anywhere, and we really have to be prepared.”

Williams Baptist College - Walnut Ridge

Brett Cooper, vice president for college relations, said the college has a general emergency preparedness plan in place for a variety of different situations: storms, fires, evacuations, shootings, etc. The college has full-time security officers on campus, and student helpers and residence hall staff are trained to help in emergencies.

Cooper said the college is looking into alert systems like text-message alerts and call chains. He said the UCA shootings made it clear that universities should invest in systems that get information out to students in a variety of different ways.

“Alerts are probably an area that we will tweak in reference to what has happened at UCA and other colleges,” Cooper said. “We’re looking into ways that we can let students know as close to instantly as possible when a crisis occurs, regardless of the kind of crisis, because there are so many differenttypes of things that can happen.” Ozarka College - Melbourne

Ozarka Advancement Director Karla Rush said the college already has an e-mail alert system and has been piloting a text-message alert system for a few weeks.

Students can sign up for the text messages. Ozarka also has an intercom system that works simultaneously in both its Melbourne and Ash Flat campuses.

Ozarka staff have gone throughtraining, and the college has a campus safety committee that has developed a crisis handbook for a variety of situations: shootings, tornadoes, power outages, pandemics, etc.

“We feel like we’ve put some things in place that we didn’t have before [Virginia Tech], and we still have some work to do,” Rush said. “The events at UCA were just a tragic thing. Our hearts go out to those people.” - awidner@ arkansasonline.com

Three Rivers, Pages 117, 120, 123 on 11/09/2008