Safety should be an uncompromisable priority for any organization. UCLA, however, has made it an optional one.
Last year, UCLA created a campus safety task force after an on-campus murder-suicide in June exposed a lack of preparedness in both safety procedures and building security. The task force produced a list of recommendations for the university, such as installing electronic emergency locks on classroom doors and encouraging students and faculty to host emergency preparedness training sessions.
In the past, this board praised that report as a positive step toward better crisis preparedness, and the campus has undergone notable improvements in its safety infrastructure. But the administration has fallen short in its efforts by making faculty emergency training optional.
In order to truly create a safer campus, emergency preparedness sessions should be mandatory for all employees, with each respective department being held responsible for ensuring its staff have undergone necessary training.
Training university employees is critical for the entire campus’ safety. In an emergency situation, employees should be able to take the lead in securing their location and the people in it.
However, the Office of Emergency Management has taken a more passive approach to training, despite the task force report finding that repeated 20-minute sessions about handling emergency situations better prepares the campus. Currently, student groups and faculty can request these training sessions but are not mandated by the university to hold them. OEM trainings have not been mandatory unless specified internally by their respective departments – meaning faculty and staff preparedness can very much fall through the cracks.
And that seems to be the case, at least for the moment. Lorraine Schneider, an emergency management training specialist at OEM, said in a previous interview that more than 400 staff and faculty have been trained since OEM began offering its updated trainings for active shooter incidents in January. However, that means only about 21 percent – if not less – of the total number of instructional faculty on campus have undergone training. At this rate, it seems unlikely that all staff will participate in sessions, much less repeat them as advised by the task force.
UCLA cannot afford to maintain this voluntary approach. The university owes it to the campus community to fully enforce these sessions, and requiring that all faculty go through training is the only way to make good on that promise.
Certainly, mandating emergency training might seem to overload faculty and staff members’ already-busy schedules. But that’s easily fixed by requiring faculty attend a certain number of training sessions per year while still maintaining OEM’s current approach that allows staff to determine when they want to attend workshops.
In this manner, employees can undergo training without being forced away from their work – an approach that some departments seem to be taking advantage of at the moment – while still making sure all staff are well-prepared for emergency incidents.
Ultimately, a grossly underprepared campus body led to much of the confusion during last year’s shooting. UCLA can only hope to avoid such chaos during another campus crisis by making safety a requirement – not an option.