It can happen at any time; that’s the part that often scares students and staff most. At any time a person can walk into a public place with a weapon — most often a gun — and the intention to kill.
After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in December 2012, there have been an average of more than three school shootings per month, according to The Washington Post.
Professor and student thoughts
Some students are familiar with the meaning behind ALICE (Alert, Lockdown, Information, Counter and Escape) training because of high school training, but haven’t had much experience with it in a college setting, except for maybe a short mention.
“A teacher of mine even brought (ALICE) up, so I thought that was really cool,” said Lizzie Roman, a freshman who has yet to declare a major.
Roman said she sometimes thinks about her reaction in different class settings if a shooting or other attack were to take place.
“I always try to think, ‘Would I be the hero?’ ” Roman said. “I don’t know that I would be.”
Roman said she hopes to see more students take an interest in ALICE training because sometimes it’s hard to decide what to do in an active-threat situation unless a plan has been considered beforehand.
“I would hope that the word about ALICE training gets around because you can’t just hide, you have to fight back,” Roman said.
The recent incidents have professors also considering what they would do if a school shooting occurred.
“I can’t speak for everybody,” said Jennifer Steele, a professor in the sociology and anthropology department. “But I haven’t been briefed on what to do.”
Steele also mentioned, from a sociological perspective, that behaviors can give an indication of potential threat.
“I think it would be smart to have better training for instructors and students on what to do in that event,” Steele said “I also think it would be pretty smart for teachers and instructors to have a place to report students that stand out in a particular way.”
Ohio University has an online service professors can use to report people who stand out in extreme ways.
Other professors don’t really feel threatened by the possibility of an active shooter situation.
“I just don’t feel insecure in classrooms or on campus at Ohio University,” said Kathryn Fisher, a professor in the political science department.
psychology
Although the stereotypical school shooter is portrayed as having some sort of mental illness, that isn’t always true, or at least is not obviously apparent; those who become active threats don’t always fit a profile of mental instability.
What makes the idea of an active shooter or attacker situation even more threatening is the fact that the threat is usually coming from a person who belongs in the targeted area.
“As we’ve seen with school-related shootings, it’s not kids coming in from other places,” said Steven Evans, professor of psychology. “It’s kids that are expected to be there.”
There are also cases where the active threat didn’t actually have mental illnesses or disabilities. Some school shootings, such as San Joaquin Valley High Charter School in Taft, Calif., show that bullying is a factor that leads some otherwise stable individuals to take drastic action.
“Adolescence is a time when kids without any mental issues go through a lot of development, adjustment, growth and stress,” Evans said.
Additional factors, such as bullying or problems in the home, can lead to additional stress and young people might not always know how to deal with that appropriately.
Larger problems in society can possibly be attributed to public attacks. Steele said issues of gender in society are something to consider when looking at those who become active shooters.
“From a sociological point of view, a lot of these are male,” Steele said. “We haven’t really seen a female. There are women that kill, but we don’t see them doing these mass killings.”
Overall, there are certain characteristics that active shooters possess; researchers are constantly trying to profile potential threats, but oftentimes potential dangers go unnoticed until it’s too late.
One telltale sign of potential danger is when people talk about killing. Most times the person who is a threat will talk about extreme violence as a joke to see how others will react.
“The No. 1 sign that we do know does occur is somebody talking about it before they do it. But my question is, ‘do college students know that?’” Steele said. “If they hear a student talking to another student, even if it’s a joke, that could be potentially a warning sign.”
It can be nearly impossible to see the signs of an attacker before a shooting, but this doesn’t mean that bystanders should live their lives in fear.
According to USA Today, 934 people have died in mass shootings from 2007 to 2013. In contrast, 30,000 people are killed each year in vehicle-related incidents and accidents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
ALICE TRAINING AnD PREVENTION
OU promotes the ALICE defense, which can mean anything from fighting back against a threat to running away.
“There’s no one ‘check-in-the-box’ response; if an active shooter comes, do this, if an active shooter does this, do that. That’s not how it works,” said Officer Kevin Frith of the OU Police Department. “It might be best for someone to run on one side of the room and someone else to fight back on the other side of the room.”
Although a presentation and tips are available with ALICE information on what to do in an active shooter scenario, the presentation is not mandatory for incoming students to watch but can be found on YouTube and through the OU website.
Optional ALICE presentations in Baker University Center are given at various points in the school year. This year, two presentations have already occurred.
Students and staff are given notice of potential threats on campus in a variety of forms, such as email alerts, text alerts, OU’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, and CATVision.
“Any time there is an imminent threat to the campus or the university community, that’s when we’d use the text messaging system,” said Lt. Tim Ryan of OUPD. “Active shooter certainly being one of those situations.”
In addition to these alerts, there are also loud-speakers positioned at different spots on campus that will produce a siren in case of an extreme emergency. The speakers have been used previously during tornado warnings.
“We could actually have someone speaking live on those systems if we needed to,” Ryan said.
Although communication can be vital to the process of informing authorities of an active shooter situation, it can also prove to be a hindrance as well.
“Sometimes communication can be a part of the problem. We get inundated with calls when something like that happens and they don’t really have information,” Ryan said. “They’re calling for more non-emergency purposes like, ‘Hey can you tell us what’s going on?’ ”
One problem students and staff could come across in an active shooter situation is the safety of the classrooms around campus. Most doors lock from the outside and teachers leave them open because students trickle in throughout class.
ALICE also suggests barricading the doors if a known threat is present, but some of the larger classrooms have desks and chairs that are fixed to the floor.
In the case of an active shooter situation, these things could be major hazards, but ALICE provides students and staff with the necessary information that could be used to get out of these incidents.
“I believe that anyone who has worked in higher education since the Virginia Tech shooting has considered this,” said Ryan Lombardi, vice president for Student Affairs. “We have established plans and protocols in place should this happen. Of course, we all hope that we are never faced with this on our campus, but if so, we would follow the direction of law enforcement in the situation.”
The main idea that OUPD hopes to relay to students and staff is that prevention is far better than cure.
“You’re never going to think of what to do on the spot if you haven’t thought about it ahead of time,” Frith said.
tt315212@ohiou.edu
@tiffanytouville
