A recent series of shootings on college campuses, have raised concerns for the safety of schools and their students nationwide. So far there have been 11 total deaths and 13 injuries.
On Aug. 26, there were two people shot on the campus of Texas Southern University. Another occurred on Thursday, Sept. 3, on the Sacramento City College campus. One was killed and two were injured. Luckily, the man responsible for this attack has since been arrested.
More recently, on Oct. 1, a shooting at Umpqua Community College resulted in 10 deaths and nine injuries. The shooter, 26-year-old Christopher Sean Harper-Mercer, was a student at the college, and committed suicide during an altercation with the police. The shooter used only a handgun in his attack, but law enforcement found a total of 14 guns stashed away at his residence.
Not only have there been a disturbing number of shootings, but on Monday, Sept. 28, a warning went out to students via various news outlets about a threat of violence on a university in the Philadelphia area. The FBI says that no specific college was mentioned in the threat, which was posted on social media, yet many students in the area opted to stay home from their classes to remain safe. Monday passed without incident, but many remain on alert.
At Bucks, the Security and Safety office has taken steps to help protect students in the event of a shooter on campus. Mark Moore, assistant director of Security and Safety, said there have never been any shootings on campus in the school’s history.
However, in the event that one should occur, Moore said the first line of warning would come via the Emergency Alert System. Students are strongly advised to sign up for these text alerts. They could save a life. Also, Moore said, “we do have an emergency siren that would go off to alert people that something was going happening on campus.” There is also a “memorandum of understanding with the Newtown police department” to ensure that, should extra reinforcements be required, they can be quickly dispatched.
Moore explains that, as far as campus security is concerned, “our role primarily would be to try and identify where the shooter is, try to assist in evacuating people from other areas, sealing off the area essentially to make sure that nobody else is entering the space and at risk of becoming a victim.” They are also “in the process of looking at classrooms space, just seeing about locking down those areas” in an effort to create an even more solid plan of action.
When asked what actions students should take in the event of a shooter on campus, Moore shared his “general rule of thumb…Run if you can. Hide if you can’t. Fight if you must.” He explained that “if you can get out of the area, that is always your best option.” However, he warns against simply running in any open direction. “A lot of times, if you aren’t sure where the shooter is, you don’t necessarily want to run to an area where the shooter might be. So that’s where you have to think ‘Ok, do I know where he is? Do i hear the gunshots over here and can I run this way and get out?’”        Running, he says, is the best and first option, but students need to be cautious, intelligent, and aware before taking this course of action.
“If you can’t [run], or you aren’t sure where the shooter is, you aren’t sure where a safe place is, classroom. Barricade yourself in. Turn off the lights.” advises Moore. Once you are well hidden, he tells students “to reach out to somebody, let them know where you are, just so when everything is done we we can kind of make sure that we’re letting everybody know that you’re out safe.”
Even for an event as unpredictable as a school shooting, there are still some preemptive measures that can be taken. As a security officer, Moore tells that “Most of what we’re going to be able to do is going to be on the front end.” With this in mind, he strongly urges students to “notify somebody if you see somebody who looks suspicion….if you hear a friend of a fellow student making threats, or talking in a way that leads you to think they may pose a threat, then by all means let somebody know. We’d much rather you tell us and it turns out to be nothing then you don’t tell us, and they show up and we’ve got some injuries or deaths.
So yeah, that’s the big thing. If you hear something that doesn’t sound right, or you have a concern about somebody, even if it happens to be not necessarily not a student here, but you’ve got friends who are familiar with the campus, or significant others, who might have a problem with you…just let us know. Make us aware. Then that way we can be prepared, we can work with local law enforcement. We need to be aware. Again, if you hear something, say something. That’s the big thing.”