Knowing what to do if shooting starts still hazy at colleges

Eight years after the Virginia Tech massacre led to tighter security at colleges across the U.S., some schools make “active shooter” training mandatory for incoming students, while others offer little more than brief online guidance on what to do if there’s a gunman on the loose, a review by The Associated Press finds.

The AP looked at public colleges and universities in more than 40 states after yet another shooting rampage, the killing of nine people at an Oregon community college Oct. 1. On Friday, there was more bloodshed, with one person killed and three wounded at an Arizona university.

At some institutions, such as the Colorado School of Mines and Arkansas State University, training on how to respond to an armed intruder has become as much a part of fall orientation as lessons on alcohol abuse. Students hear presentations covering their options, such as running, hiding or fighting back.

Other schools have purely voluntary training. Or they put information on what to do in an emergency on websites, where it can easily be overlooked by students and staff members. Many public college and university systems leave it

up to their individual campuses to draw up emergency plans and decide what level of training, if any, to give employees and students.

In the wake of the recent violence, some professors, students and administrators are asking whether schools need to do more to deliver potentially life-saving messages to those on campus.

The challenges are particularly acute at two-year community colleges, which often do not have their own police forces to conduct training exercises for staff and students. They also tend to have lots of older, working students who can be hard to reach.

“That it’s actually happened recently with the frequency and danger it has, I think everyone is frightened and asking a lot of questions about how well-prepared we would be as a campus,” said David Morse, an English instructor who is president of the Academic Senate for California’s 113 community colleges.

The 2007 slaughter of 32 people by a student at Virginia Tech prompted Congress to require colleges and universities to adopt procedures for notifying the campus of an immediate threat. Under the law, schools also must publicize their emergency response plans “in a manner designed to reach students and staff.”

The AP review found that most schools have set up sophisticated alert systems that use text messages, social media or technology that can remotely take over computers tied to campus servers. Many also have added armed officers, conducted drills with law enforcement authorities and created threat-assessment teams that try to determine whether an overheard remark or violence-tinged essay

is a genuine danger sign.

Some of these measures are credited with saving lives. When a gunman shot students at a Florida State University library a year ago, campus police responded within minutes of the first 911 call and fired a barrage of bullets that killed him. Less than two weeks before, the police had participated in active shooter training that included a scenario with a gunman at the library.

Umpqua Community College, site of the Oregon mass shooting, also did many things right to prepare, and experts said its efforts may well have saved lives.

A small, rural school, Umpqua didn’t have its own police force, but administrators brought in local officers so they would be familiar with the layout. Professors and staff regularly discussed how they should respond if someone started shooting, and where in their buildings would be the safest place to hunker down. The school also had emergency notification and lockdown procedures in place.

But in general, educating students and employees about what to do in the event of an attack has proved something of a stumbling block. While most schools have created posters, brochures and online guides, some of them have yet to figure out how to get people to read, much less absorb, the material.

Richard Turton, chairman of West Virginia University’s Faculty Senate, said he wasn’t familiar with his school’s active shooter plan until a reporter’s question prompted him to do some digging. He found a PowerPoint presentation and videos on the university’s website.

“I would suspect many faculty who are very busy would tend to not look at those things unless they’re sort of prompted several times,” Turton said.