Last summer, after the tragic shootings at Virginia Tech and the shooting death of a corrections officer on our campus, a security task force was put together at the U.
To date, progress in the U Safety Task Force is largely unknown, but across the campus, U students are trying their own hand at creating a security plan for the U.
As part of a crisis communication course offered at the U, six groups of students have come up with various solutions to emergency situations at the U — and a majority of them think those solutions lie in text messaging capabilities.
Administrators disagree with that sentiment, citing issues of cost and insufficient technology as reasons why text messages would not be a good way to alert students of an emergency on campus.
“Word of mouth is so much faster than that,” said Wayne McCormack, head of the Safety Task Force. “Telephone, radio and the commercial media still exist, so what people need to know in case of an emergency goes through fairly rapid channels of communication.”
That’s fair enough. Perhaps text messages are not the best idea, but what is better?
Given the fact that nearly a year has gone by since the time the task force was implemented and we have still yet to see any plan of attack in the case of an emergency, one has to wonder why the safety of the people at the U is obviously not a priority to administrators.
The safety of people at the U should be given the full attention of everyone delegated to put a safety plan in order. Given the amount of time people spend talking about the Campus Master Plan, one has to wonder if campus safety is being given as much attention. Safety must be given precedence over things such as new buildings and tearing down the golf course because human life is by no means frivolous and should not be treated as such.
The students working on campus safety plans need to be taken seriously. The administrators to whom they present need to take a close look at the ideas they come up with and actually consider them as tangible plans for the U.
At this point, there absolutely needs to be some sort of means of communication between campus security and the population of the U. At this point, given the pace at which the task force is moving, perhaps we should be looking to other outlets with the potential to actually get things done.