AMANDA DEDIE
News Editor
Two weeks ago, Jamestown Community College experienced a potential emergency situation.
Around 2 p.m., a threatening phone call was made to the JCC switchboard. The caller stated that an active shooter was on the way to the campus. The college immediately went into lock-out and shut-down mode.
Though the suspect has not been found and the campus feels it is currently in no immediate danger, the question has been raised: in the event of an “active shooter” situation, what’s a college campus to do?
In grades K-12, control of an emergency situation is much easier. A school for those grades is generally one building. When students are moving class to class, they’re still in the building. It’s easier to usher students into a classroom, a gym or a cafeteria than it is on a college campus.
At Fredonia there are over 50 buildings, over 20 parking lots and numerous areas on campus that aren’t inside a building for students to hang out. The campus isn’t gated and students are free to wander at all times of day, making it harder to get students to an inside location, or to even stay in place.
What’s a resident to do?
The number one rule during the emergency situation is to do what you’re told.
Take, for example, the bomb scare that occurred on campus last month. An email was sent out telling students to stay away from lot 10, as a potentially dangerous situation was being attended to.
“We knew, once we made the announcement to stay away from that area, that people would come to that area in droves to see what was going on,” said Ann Burns, chief of the University Police Department. “We had people from Mason flocking to the windows. We had students going up to the roof on Mason Hall … That’s not what we wanted people to do, but there was nothing we could do about that.”
Those actions are the complete opposite of what the NY-ALERT emails and texts asked students to do, which was to stay away. In the event of a potentially dangerous situation, going near the quarantined area is one of the most dangerous things you could do.
That being said, a bomb scare and an active shooter situation, such as the one that could have happened at JCC, are a little different. In a bomb situation, areas can be blocked off. But what about when an armed person is roaming the campus? What do students do then?
“The protocol is really multi-pronged. It’s communication, which is getting the announcement out through Cooper Wheelock [the school’s campus-wide speaker system]. We tell the students what’s happening, tell them to get to a place of safety immediately and to lock down,” said Burns.
She continued, “We have officers going to the scene, to where the shooting is happening. We have to get in, we have to take care of the threat, and we have to eliminate the threat as quickly as possible … That’s the whole point of having the equipment that we have.”
There was much to be said in terms of communication during the bomb scare, but an active shooter situation is something that can be planned for and can have more in terms of instructions and communication. However, it’s important to remember that when one asks for communication, one should probably listen to what’s been communicated to them.
“If it’s a dangerous situation, we shouldn’t go to it. We might get an alert on our phones, telling us “dangerous situation in Fenton — shelter in place,” meaning, stay where you are,” said Dr. Virginia Horvath, president of The State University of New York at Fredonia. “Don’t go in the hall. Don’t go outside. Stay in place.”
Horvath continued to talk about the societal expectation of instant gratification when it comes to new information.
“We’re so used to communication as a society that we say, ‘What does that mean? I want to know what’s going on!’ But we’re told, ‘stay here, don’t go into a certain area, and we’ll let you know what it’s safe.’ [But] when something is going on … You’re not going to get a play-by-play,” said Horvath.
There is no reason not to trust the higher-ups on campus. Fredonia has numerous resources when it comes to handling an emergency situation on campus.
Mike Barone, director of marketing and communications, said, “We’re very lucky, being part of the SUNY system, having university police that are part of the New York State police system. The resources they have access to, the training that they go through and the years of service … They have full rights and powers and accessibility.”
“Our officers are trained in everything [such as] sniper training and obvious[ly] the series of events you have to go through to lock down a building and the series of events following, so that’s a benefit that a lot of other campuses just don’t have,” continued Barone.
However, though it isn’t blatantly obvious to students what an emergency plan may entail, rest assured that Fredonia has thought of and planned for everything they can think of.
“We would immediately go to every single resource we had available to us and let people know exactly what’s happening,” said Barone. “We would announce … to avoid [the area] until further notice. There’d be a shelter in place for anyone in the building, and of course, emergency responders would be running there as fast as humanly possible.”