UCLA was unprepared when a murder-suicide in June led people to believe there was an active shooter on campus. Instructors and students couldn’t lock doors, weren’t sure what to do and some ended up spreading false information.
In response to the incident, Chancellor Gene Block formed the UCLA Campus Safety Task Force – made up of students and faculty – to analyze the lockdown’s events. The outcome: a 90-page report listing recommendations for administrators to make UCLA safer during lockdowns.
This report is a commendable effort to better prepare UCLA for emergency situations – be they natural or human-borne. Some of the recommendations it makes have room for improvement, but the overall report is an overwhelmingly positive step forward in better-equipping UCLA to respond to campus crises.
The report addresses many of the major issues that came up during the murder-suicide incident, including dysfunctional locks, poor communication with the Westwood community during moments of crisis, and little emergency training for students and faculty.
As of this summer, the administrators and the task force had already taken measures to attend to dysfunctional locks, which were a major concern during the June incident. Many students had to barricade doors or create improvised locks. Before classes started this year, UCLA Facilities Management retrofitted individual, electronic locks onto 90 percent of classroom doors, allowing students to lock rooms from the inside with the push of a button – a simple yet practical solution.
[Related: UCLA community reacts to June 1 murder-suicide]
In addition, the task force suggested the Office of Emergency Management expand its emergency notifications system by mandating students and staff be subscribed to BruinAlert and by creating a website to post updates on any particular incident – a notable effort to fill the void of communication that took place in June.
Lastly, the report’s emphasis on regular, methodized training of students and faculty for how to deal with emergency situations is crucial. The task force’s conclusion that short, repeated 20-minute sessions about handling active-shooter and earthquake situations better prepares the campus ought to be applauded.
Despite the overwhelming number of beneficial recommendations, however, the report does fall short on some accounts. Some of its recommendations, such as urging distressed students to download “psychological first aid” mobile applications and creating remote locking technologies that can be activated with a BruinCard, seem impractical and costly.
The effectiveness of “psychological first aid” applications is highly questionable – given the stigma even in just downloading them. The task force ought to look into the development of short-term psychological treatment plans with the Counseling and Psychological Services center to be implemented in the aftermath of an emergency situation, as opposed to simply urging students to download apps.
In addition, creating exterior locks that can be activated remotely via BruinCard seems excessive, considering single-button lock systems have already been fitted onto classroom doors and could be added to the exterior of buildings.
Nevertheless, despite these particular shortcomings, the task force’s recommendations are well-thought-out and beneficial to the campus. The report is a much-needed update to UCLA’s emergency response system, and by recognizing that the recommendations are not the be-all and end-all solutions to the problems that came up on June 1, the task force poises itself to continue making headway in better preparing UCLA for emergency situations.