Campus security should be an important issue for UCLA students after the recent incidences at Virginia Tech, Delaware State University, St. John’s University and the University of Colorado.
UCLA has been fortunate enough to avoid a gunman on campus, but just within the last year a man was roaming Westwood holding a crossbow and a stabbing occurred on the steps of Kerckhoff Hall.
On such a large campus in the middle of a metropolitan area, students are rightfully worried about their safety.
The 35,000 students should also be worried about the ability of campus authorities to alert everyone in the event of such an emergency.
Currently UCLA uses an emergency e-mail notification system and also has the ability to override the data on most of the school Web pages to alert the community in the event that something goes horribly wrong.
But the vast majority of students do not have the ability to instantly receive e-mail updates while on campus, so this system would likely be ineffective at alerting the campus of an immediate threat.
In addition, university police are highly trained, and unlike many college campuses the officers here have the ability to respond directly to an “active shooter” situation rather than having to wait for the LAPD to arrive.
UCPD responded commendably to the crossbow incident, working in conjunction with the LAPD to cut off access to the area until they could determine there was no threat.
But during that incident, students in and around the area that had been blocked off who called UCPD or LAPD dispatch to find out what was going on were told that the officers were responding to a call about a person with a weapon.
From there, rumors spun around campus for hours about what had happened and, without a way to quickly alert students and dispel rumors, the situation got unnecessarily out of hand.
A group of administrators have formed a committee to address these inadequacies in our alert system, and some of the ideas they are considering include text alerts and emergency public address systems.
The committee will issue a report on its findings soon but it did not include any students in the discussion according to Undergraduate Students Association Council President Gabe Rose.
Our police officers have the training and ability to respond to these situations, which is comforting, and it’s even better that campus administrators have formed a committee to address emergency communication.
However, the fact that students were not included in the discussion process is a major oversight.
Administrators and student leaders have been talking about including more students in decision making on campus, and it’s important for students to explore with administrators a system that will work best for a community ““ especially when that community primarily consists of students.
This board challenges the administration to keep students in the loop when it comes to security, and this board challenges the university to present a thoughtful and coherent plan for emergency alerts that can be implemented by the end of the quarter.
This issue is too important to be bogged down in unnecessary bureaucracy, and a system must be implemented quickly in the event that it would need to be used.