By JORDAN MCLEMORE
News Editor
For college students, their campus is a safe, boring place that they go to spend a few hours each day for class and homework.
Many don’t think about an intruder coming and destroying the relative peace and quiet of everyday life.
For some, this distant thought has become a reality, with campus shootings occurring more than ever these days. There have been 17 shootings on college campuses in 2015.
Calleb Mosburg, Dean of Student Affairs,spoke about the campus readiness plan Northwestern has in place in case of a campus shooting.
According to Mosburg, there are, in fact, books with emergency details and information in them that are put out at the beginning of every year, available for students to take.
They have detailed information in them about the steps to take in case of an emergency. Mosburg encourages everyone to sign up for the emergency alert system that is available through RangerNet that allows you to receive alerts on your phone, email, or phone calls. Faculty and staff can also get a phone call on their office phone.
In the case of an emergency, students are told to get in the nearest classroom if they are in the hallways and to turn the lights off and lock the door if you are able to. Emergency handbooks are going to begin to be distributed better around campus. As soon as an alert is made, the sheriff’s office and police department are dispatched to come assist campus police along with OSBI.
In the case of an active shooter on campus, the professors are to take charge. Faculty and staff go through a training every fall to prepare them for this event if it were to occur. This is to make sure everyone is as safe as possible.
Campus shootings and what to do in the case of one aren’t covered in Freshman Connection, the mandatory class for freshman. There are many seminars for students but campus security isn’t covered in class or in a seminar. Mosburg said he hopes to look into changing that in coming years, to better inform and protect students.
There is an alarm set to sound in the case of a campus intruder, which has a distinct sound, different from a tornado siren or fire alarm to alert campus of an intruder. Everywhere on campus has the same response, regardless of where it is on campus. The goal is to make sure everyone is safe, no matter where it is occurring. We have two full time campus police on campus during the day and one full time at night. We have multiple agencies able to come to campus in the case of an emergency.
All shootings have different targets, and Northwestern’s main goal is to make sure everyone is as safe as possible.