Lockdown leaves students questioning campus safety

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BY VALERIE VELIKAYA


The lockdown that took place a little over three weeks ago sent a shockwave across the metro. No one was hurt, but the alleged suspect was never caught, leaving on and off-campus residents with more questions than answers.

During the shutdown, faculty and stu­dents followed protocol, barricading and steering clear from doors and windows.

However, there have been reports of professors continuing their lectures.

“Yeah, we had some people. We ran across a few of them,” said Crime Pre­vention Officer Dan Robles. “We just sug­gested that they not do that. I think it was kind of interesting that you see that and that’s happened in the past other shoot­ings. Well, like some of the major ones, you know, like Virginia Tech and a couple of the other ones … they found people still in their desks and some were de­ceased, but they were still in their desks just like they were watching the teacher teach.”

In fact, there has been an undercurrent of concerns pertaining to the way the situ­ation was handled.

Robles said that this is the first inci­dent the college has ever experienced, and there was definitely room for im­provement.

The campus police are thinking of new ways to deal with these situations.

“It’s all dynamic,” said Robles. “It’s all dependent on what goes down.”

“I think it should have been immedi­ately a lockdown on the entire campus rather than just the buildings that were connected or an immediate threat or whatever,” said Andrew Tady, student. “As soon as other students heard that the lockdown was on [COM] they kind of just headed for their cars just because they didn’t want to get stuck on campus.”

A.L.I.C.E. (Alert-Lockdown-Inform-Counter-Evacuate) is the school’s go-to defense mechanism, developed by Alisa Pacer, emergency preparedness manager.

“One of the main parts of A.L.I.C.E. is to alert and inform,” said Pacer. “Because there wasn’t an exact location listed, it was good that we were locked down.”

Tady, who helped barricade the Stu­dent News Center with newspapers at the time of the lockdown, thinks the college should come up with a more tactful ap­proach to deal with these situations.

“Perhaps having a specific classroom plan. I mean, obviously there’s signs up on the door – what do you do when there’s a tornado, you go this way; fire, this way. It might be a good idea to have that at least discussed … some kind of set plan of some sort, you know, make sure certain doors lock.”

 

Contact Valerie Velikaya, managing editor, vvelikay@jccc.edu

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