2008 Woodie Awards
SRU's emergency standards cast in new light
Issue date: 4/20/07 Section: Opinion
"Better safe than sorry."
Sadly, those words didn't cross the minds of administrators at Virginia Tech on Monday morning after the shooting deaths of two students at about 7:15 a.m.
A few hours later, what followed was a terrible, but perhaps preventable, series of events that became fodder for newscasts and ended with the deaths of 31 others, the shooter included, bringing the total number of dead to 33.
What if 33 of your classmates, friends, professors and teammates were gunned down Monday?
What if such an event happened at SRU?
It didn't. But it just as easily could have.
At the heart of the problem was a lack of communication, in this case between VT administrators and students, who both could have benefited greatly from a campus-wide lockdown or a step-by-step alert of what was happening immediately after two bodies were found in a dorm.
Since the days when an air raid siren was supposed to be enough to allow students time to save themselves from a nuclear holocaust, the communication technologies now available far surpass the methods of yesteryear. And while there still seems to exist no surefire method of alerting students on a campus of impending danger, some of these new technologies-social networking Web sites, mass e-mails and the cellular phone, to name a few-could have gone a long way to prevent the carnage that overtook the campus.
Likewise, these students and administrators could have benefited from the better-safe-than-sorry approach that SRU has utilized quite well.
Moreover, SRU administrators have done more than their share to ensure students' safety. This is exemplified no better than when a threat of the shooting of black university students was brought to light on a Sunday evening in late September 2006.
The threats, made by a teenage student who wasn't even on campus, proved to be nothing more than what was subsequently dubbed a "hoax," but still put students and faculty on edge for a few days. However, the university's mentality and approach-alerting the campus of the threats via e-mail, placing an alert on the university's homepage, permitting the absence of classes by students who felt uneasy with the situation-were appropriate.
Sadly, those words didn't cross the minds of administrators at Virginia Tech on Monday morning after the shooting deaths of two students at about 7:15 a.m.
A few hours later, what followed was a terrible, but perhaps preventable, series of events that became fodder for newscasts and ended with the deaths of 31 others, the shooter included, bringing the total number of dead to 33.
What if 33 of your classmates, friends, professors and teammates were gunned down Monday?
What if such an event happened at SRU?
It didn't. But it just as easily could have.
At the heart of the problem was a lack of communication, in this case between VT administrators and students, who both could have benefited greatly from a campus-wide lockdown or a step-by-step alert of what was happening immediately after two bodies were found in a dorm.
Since the days when an air raid siren was supposed to be enough to allow students time to save themselves from a nuclear holocaust, the communication technologies now available far surpass the methods of yesteryear. And while there still seems to exist no surefire method of alerting students on a campus of impending danger, some of these new technologies-social networking Web sites, mass e-mails and the cellular phone, to name a few-could have gone a long way to prevent the carnage that overtook the campus.
Likewise, these students and administrators could have benefited from the better-safe-than-sorry approach that SRU has utilized quite well.
Moreover, SRU administrators have done more than their share to ensure students' safety. This is exemplified no better than when a threat of the shooting of black university students was brought to light on a Sunday evening in late September 2006.
The threats, made by a teenage student who wasn't even on campus, proved to be nothing more than what was subsequently dubbed a "hoax," but still put students and faculty on edge for a few days. However, the university's mentality and approach-alerting the campus of the threats via e-mail, placing an alert on the university's homepage, permitting the absence of classes by students who felt uneasy with the situation-were appropriate.
Be the first to comment on this story