Over the last two decades, mass shootings have become more and more of a frequent happening across America, causing many universities and high schools to develop open shooter procedures to ensure students understand what to do when an active shooter is on campus. After the shooting at Umpqua Community College last fall, Pacific University’s administration released a policy for students to follow in the event of an open shooter.
This was later followed up by an open shooter drill where students were forced to react to a situation based on the policy.
The drill received criticism from students around campus, claiming they were unaware the drill was happening.
“We found the drill to be very positive. There are a few areas that we felt that we could do better, but in areas where students participated in the drill it seemed to have a pretty positive result”, Scott Shuman, director of legal affairs, said.
While the drill struggled to gain the attention of students in the University Center, there were many instances where students were heavily involved in the drill.
In Scott Hall for instance, students propped objects up against the door to simulate barricading it. The policy has been updated this year in the aspect of the emergency response plan.
This past summer, seven faculty members went to a training session with the Federal Insurance & Mitigation Association to learn about emergency response on academic campuses.
“What we took away from the Federal Insurance & Mitigation Administration training session, was that there are more opportunities to better integrate the city’s response within the plan as well as continuing to train students on how to handle these situations,” Schuman said.
Students can access the Open Shooter Procedure, as well as several training videos in the “Personal Safety on Campus” section of Pacific’s website.
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