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Lockdown situation gets thumbs up |
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Alitrenette Scott
On Wednesday April 16, 2008 Texas A & M University- Kingsville was put on lockdown. The lockdown was sparked by a law enforcement chase of suspected illegal immigrants who had escaped custody and were allegedly carrying weapons.
There has been some controversy sparked about how the University handled the lockdown procedures.
A professor claimed to have been notified about the lockdown after already releasing her students from the building and being told by a school janitor. She confirmed what the janitor had told her when she checked her email, where she found an alert message from the University.
I was in my dorm room playing video when I received a phone call from a student who was not even on campus, he made me aware of the fact that the school was on lockdown.
I didn’t even believe him. It seemed to me that if this was true I would have already been told by school officials, especially since I was the one on campus. In disbelief I left my room to find out if he was telling the truth.
The question is if this had been a situation where students were being harmed if the University would have been successful in saving lives. Or, had those students who were released from class with no knowledge of what was going on along with myself had been harmed. There is no reasoning for a professor with a classroom full of students not being alerted that the school was in a lockdown situation.
The fact that I along with other students were not aware of this until about an hour into the situation does not make me feel confident in the schools ability to deal with such a situation.
Even after the media got hold of the fact that our University was on complete lockdown, they came to shoot footage and students were walking around outside, just like any other school day.
It seems to me that we are in need of a more organized procedure in handling these types of circumstances. A procedure where the majority of the students and faculty will have the chance to be out of harms way and be aware of what is going on.
Loud speakers in every building or some type of system where at least everyone on campus would be notified of what type of situation we were in.
The current plan of notifying students and faculty through email is absurd. People don’t check their emails every second of everyday. Some people only have access of computers during lab and library hours and faculty certainly don’t check their emails during lectures.
Although this was obviously not a situation where people were hurt, this was a good test trail. With that said it showed that our University would not have been prepared if it had been. Hopefully they will use this test as way to become more prepared. It’s always better to prepare to be safer so that you don’t end up sorry.