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Wednesday, 05 March 2008 |
Lockdown proves good learning experience for campus
The Appalachian State University community breathed sighs of both relief and frustration Tuesday afternoon when it was discovered that the fears of a gunman on campus had been completely fabricated.
Incredibly hard to predict and prevent, these situations are an unfortunate side effect of a large student body in one location.
However, the anxiety and inconvenience senior Matthew W. Haney caused Monday is reprehensible.
While Haney should be punished for the panic he caused on Appalachian’s campus, The Appalachian
believes the incident proved to be a valuable learning experience for our emergency alert system.
The Appalachian believes although, the situation was handled well overall, there are some changes the
university should address if another incident such as this should occur again.
The threat of a gunman on or around campus is serious and not canceling evening classes until many
people were already in their 5 p.m. class is unacceptable.
According to a message from Chancellor Kenneth E. Peacock outlining the events, there was
“sufficient information” at 4:11 p.m. to send out an alert to students and lockdown the Holmes
Convocation Center, John E. Thomas Hall and the Lucy Brock Child Development Center given the
alleged gunman’s proximity to these areas.
However, a decision to cancel classes did not come until 5:10 p.m., about an hour after the first alert
was announced.
Despite classes being cancelled 10 minutes after the hour, by 5 p.m. the university had already issued
two alerts and had no doubt caused many on campus to worry about their safety.
The Appalachian believes evening classes should have been cancelled earlier, relieving students of the
need to walk across campus to their 5 p.m. classes.
The Appalachian believes while response time to alerting the student body of a possible gunman was
prompt, sources such as The Appalachian and WASU-FM should’ve been contacted by phone, instead
of by the campus-wide e-mail alert.
WASU and The Appalachian are sources on campus that students can turn to for news.
Some students in Welborn Dining Hall complained that no alert came over WASU during it’s
programming and since they were not near computers, they were unaware of any issue on campus.
While the alerts came at a relatively consistent pace, another major issue was the actual terms used in
the alerts such as “lockdown” and “standby.”
For example, some professors allowed students to leave during the lockdown period, while others kept
students in the classrooms as advised.
Furthermore, when the university was put on standby mode, most were unclear as to what that term
meant.
Appalachian administrators need to establish some sort of policy on what professors can and should
do in a situation like this so confusion doesn’t ensue.
The whole process deserves a learning curve, seeing as how Appalachian has never had to lockdown
the campus.
Overall, the situation was handled well by Boone and University Police and by Appalachian
administrators.
However, The Appalachian does believe this situation should be used as an example to improve efforts
to keep students, faculty and staff safe.
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