The SRU Health and Safety Department hosted an Emergency Preparedness program on Thursday to help educate students on situations like active shooters and fire drills.
Paul Novak, interim executive director of planning and environmental health and safety, said he was pleased with the progress made in recent years.
“It’s always encouraging to see a concerted effort from the student body to keep themselves safe and to make their campus a safer place,” Novak said.
Novak said that from 2014 to 2016, attendance has risen from 196 people attending the event to 653.
“We offer two sessions a year (one in the fall and one in the spring) and any sessions upon request,” Novak said. “We have also begun to expand beyond just preparing students for accidents but also teaching them how to prevent them as well.”
The session on Thursday helped attendees better understand current emergency exercises and planned drills, along with other safety situations such as active shooters and how to best develop emergency evacuation plans.
These practices have an a positive effect on SRU, which has been ranked in the past as one of the safest campuses in the United States.
“Campus security does an excellent job at keeping SRU a safe learning environment for the student body,” Novak said. “However the students’ dedication to the improvement of their campus should garner some much-needed credit.”
Novak said that students are taking a real interest in both their own and theirs peers’ safety, as indicated by the increase in attendance of the emergency preparedness sessions.
