Shooting rampage at Oregon college is a grim warning for campuses everywhere.
Terror swept over the Umpqua Community College campus in Oregon last week as a gunman killed nine people before killing himself.
“That could’ve been me,” said USF St. Petersburg junior Kaitlyn Brass, 19, who found the incident nerve-racking.
Freshman Andrew Deming, 18, said he isn’t worried about a mass shooting at USFSP. However, he said one of his professors expressed a fear of a disruptive student during one of his classes.
When the student showed signs of rage and suspicious activity, the teacher “called the cops,” said Deming, “He was taken out and searched.”
The University Police Department has a detailed plan and procedures to prepare for a possible armed intruder or active shooter on school grounds. University police Chief David Hendry said the officers are prepared.
“We would rather respond to a lot of false alarms than miss something real,” he said.
Hendry has been university police chief since October 2013. Before that, he was police chief at Tallahassee Community College for two years and officer at the Tallahassee Police Department for nearly 29 years. He grew up in St. Petersburg and has a bachelor’s in criminology and master’s in executive management from Florida State University, according to his resume on LinkedIn.
“We have a very powerful emergency notification system,” said Hendry, “and it is triggered as soon as we’ve identified a threat.”
Those who are subscribed to MoBull Messenger, the university’s mobile emergency alert, will be notified through text message.
One system is tested every day. At noon a “church bell” chime is emitted by five outdoor speakers throughout campus. That is a test of an emergency notification system designed to deliver a verbal message to people outdoors.
To notify people indoors, in addition to the text alerts, the computer desktops have an immediate pop-up alert and a university web page will update information regarding the emergency.
As soon as a threat is validated, the university will trigger the emergency notification system, which will automatically send text messages, desktop pop-ups and web page updates. Depending on the situation, the police will send a verbal message through the speakers.
If shooter were on campus, Hendry said, the university police would immediately call the St. Petersburg police, who have trained with campus police and are familiar with the campus, and would immediately go to the gunfire and engage the shooter.
Within a minute and a half, officers would be on the scene to confront the shooter.
For students on the scene, Hendry advises a plan of action: Run. Hide. Fight.
“It’s very direct,” said Hendry. “If you’re able to run, you run. If you’re able to hide, you hide. If not, you have to fight.”
All three tactics were used by survivors of the Oregon campus shooting.
“I heard one shot and said, ‘We need to get out.’ Then I heard a second and third, and I ran,” Sarah Cobb, 17, a freshman in a classroom next door, told the New York Times. “I was sprinting. I never ran so fast in my life.
According to the Times, other students crawled into hiding, cared for the wounded and, in one case, tried to block the gunman as he sought to enter a classroom.
The massacre in Oregon quickly became a focus of the continuing debate – and partisan standoff – on gun control in Washington and Tallahassee.
President Barack Obama and gun-control advocates renewed their call for legislation to expand mandatory background checks for gun sales – a position that a majority of voters embrace, according to national polls.
But pro-gun advocates countered that would not have prevented last week’s rampage since all the weapons were purchased legally by the shooter or his relatives over the last three years.
State Rep. Greg Steube, a Republican from Sarasota, cited the Oregon murders as evidence the Florida Legislature should enact legislation that would let Floridians with concealed weapons permits carry their weapons on college campuses.
“How many innocent people must die before college and university presidents wake up and realize that gun-free zones don’t protect anybody but the bad guys?” Steube said in an interview with the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
State university presidents and police chiefs and the state board that oversees higher education oppose the bill proposed by Steube and others, which is sure to be controversial when the 2016 legislative session begins in January. Permitting concealed weapons on campus would make violence more likely, they say.
“There’s no study that says guns on campus make things safer,” said Hendry. “From a crime rate perspective, campuses are much safer than cities and municipalities.”
Hendry said potential shooters often share their plans in advance, many times through social media by posting threatening or aggressive messages.
Hendry said reporting suspicious activity is the best preventative method. He promotes the “If You See Something, Say Something” public awareness campaign by the Department of Homeland Security.
Reporting suspicious social media messages gives police the opportunity to investigate and determine the validity of the threat, Hendry said.
Students can report information anonymously through a “silent witness” submission on the university police website.
For less-threatening situations, a student who exhibits potential signs of harm can be reported to the Students of Concern Assistance Team through a referral form on the website. The team’s goal is to intervene before a student reaches crisis level and ensure safety of the student and campus.
For students who seek to prepare themselves, the university police offers a 45-minute course on the website: FEMA Active Shooter On-Line Course, as well as safety and preparedness tips in the case of an armed intruder.
Be prepared:
Register your cell phone to receive MoBull Messenger emergency texts from campus police at:
Read these instructions on safety and preparedness and watch a six-minute video on how to survive a shooter at:
http://www.usfsp.edu/university-police-department/armed-intruder/
College campuses and mass shootings:
Since 1984, many of the mass shootings in the United States have taken place on school campuses, according to lists compiled by the Los Angeles Times and CNN.
32 killed – April 16, 2007. Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg, Va. A rampage by a 23-year-old student killed 27 students and five faculty members and wounded 17 others before the shooter committed suicide.
18 killed – Aug. 1, 1966. University of Texas, Austin. A former Marine killed 16 and wounded at least 30 while firing from a campus tower before police shot and killed him.
9 killed – Oct. 1, 2015. Umpqua Community College, Roseburg, Ore. A gunman killed eight students and a professor in an English class before police shot and killed him.
7 killed – April 2, 2012. Oikos University, Oakland, Calif. A 43-year-old former student killed six students and a secretary at the small Christian college.
5 killed – Northern Illinois University, Dekalb. A former graduate student killed five students in a geology class before killing himself.
5 killed – Nov. 1, 1991. University of Iowa, Iowa City. A physics graduate student killed three professors, an academic administrator and a fellow student before killing himself.
3 killed – Feb. 12, 2010. University of Alabama, Huntsville. An assistant professor shot and killed three people at a biology faculty meeting.
3 killed – Oct. 28, 2002. University of Arizona, Tucson. A student at the College of Nursing killed three professors before committing suicide.
