I’m looking at some pretty nasty head wounds. A girl lying 10 feet away got shot in the eye. The guy sitting on a table clearly got one in the temple. Some look OK, like the girl sitting along the wall across the room. That is, until she lifts her T-shirt to reveal the massive bullet hole in her torso.
This was the scene on the second floor lounge of Rieber Hall, at about 7:50 a.m. Tuesday, where a massive field training exercise took place, simulating active shooters at UCLA. Seeing a snapshot of the scene without context would make you think you were looking at a horror film or a war zone or, worse yet, an actual campus shooting.
But there’s really no need to dramatize what it’s like to play a “victim/actor,” as it said on our security badges. If anything, it’s weirder. A blood-splattered group of students talk about how cool the new Batman movie is. The girl who took a bullet to the eye starts texting. I have to eat my trail mix with only my right hand since my entire left arm is covered in blood. How did we get here?
Drill preparation started around 6 a.m., when volunteers gathered outside Rieber Terrace for check-in. Some of us were preselected for moulage, i.e. makeup. At first I was disappointed to not get the full treatment but changed my mind after seeing them ruin a lot of outfits, snipping holes in jeans and shirts to apply gunshot wounds. Hopefully nobody preselected wore anything designer.
We all had roles. Some were dead, others critically injured, some merely traumatized. We each had an instruction sheet with limited information: Some of us were able to assist wounded victims, others knew CPR, had critical information about the shooters or were instructed to freak out at certain points. I’m not into role-playing, but I imagine that’s what it’s like.
Some of the makeup jobs were incredibly detailed, and wounds were realistically diverse, erring on the side of gruesome. Eye-shot girl actually had a plastic film covering her eye like a transparent eye patch, with the bullet wound and consequent blood splatter applied directly on top of it.
We all had a sense of humor about the situation, but there was something about the head wounds that got me. It’s like seeing tire marks on a windy road that lead straight into a broken guard rail. Even though it didn’t happen right in front of you, you just know the guy didn’t make it.
I was one of the lucky ones. I was David Lake, a 35-year-old professor, emotionally traumatized from the event but not wounded. As a consolation for not getting full moulage, the “emotionally upset” players got blood splatters applied by industry makeup artists and emergency room nurses.
“Oh, you’re the professor,” a nurse said, applying blood liberally to my arm. “You’re going to be helping your students out; you’re the hero, so we’re going to give you lots of blood,” she said.
Information was very limited. Other than the paragraphs we were given about our individual characters, a dozen or so 50-page packets were floating around, which the FBI official made clear that we were not allowed to keep.
There are good reasons for this. Anybody with the morbid curiosity great enough to read about these shooters knows that they tend to study and prepare for these things. This field training exercise plan would probably read like a how-to guide for the sadistic discontent.
The FBI official encouraged us to stay in character and divided us into several groups for placement in Rieber. We had a safe word that we were instructed to use if anything went wrong or if somebody got really injured.
After the sirens went off and the exercise started, it felt like a long time before we could see or hear anything. In a real situation, it would have taken too long for some of us to make it. It was too long for me to make it; I had to go to the bathroom.
Stepping over wounded students sleeping, reading and snacking, I questioned the value of such a large-scale exercise. Would other campuses or other emergency response teams learn anything from the successes and failures of this glorified dress rehearsal? Would we be debriefed after this and told what to do in an actual shooting? Is the bathroom on this floor?
“Freeze!” Four uniformed officers were garrisoned in doorways, one pointing her gun right at me. “Hands up, turn around!”
They probably think I’m the shooter. I backed up slowly and, as they frisked me gently, I tried to explain. They still thought I was a shooter trying to play them. “I’m a professor. I’m not supposed to be here,” I said, producing my actor instruction sheet. Safe word. I really had to go.
When they let me go, the only thing I thought about ““ other than worrying that I screwed up the entire exercise ““ was how chaotic an actual shooting must be. In a natural disaster, like a fire or an earthquake, everybody’s a victim. Even with an arm covered in blood, they couldn’t tell if I was a threat or not.
In a fire, I’d imagine it’s a good idea to get to trapped or injured people and get them out as soon as possible. In this case, we had to wait a long time until it was clear. From a victim’s standpoint, that’s the difference between this situation and a natural disaster: Active shooters are very unnatural. Fires and earthquakes don’t stalk floor to floor with guns.
Finally we made our way to the emergency crews and triage area. There’s something cryptic about a paramedic putting a triage tag around your neck and checking your pulse every five minutes, asking if you’re OK.
From the triage area, I wasn’t able to see all of the media, the SWAT teams, the flash bangs or hostage negotiations that would come ““ none of which (save the media) happen in a natural disaster. That’s when it hit me that campuses conduct fire and earthquake drills because fires and earthquakes happen.
As reassuring as it may be to know that UCLA is prepared for a campus shooting, I found it ominous and troubling that we’ve reached a point where we need to simulate campus shootings.
The day ended with a free lunch and the promise of a free T-shirt. The shirt, featuring our beloved Bruin icon in crosshairs, looks more like something you’d find in the visitor section among a sea of “FUCLA” T-shirts than in the Den at Pauley. As I rode my bike home to Santa Monica, my bloody arm probably confused dozens of passing motorists and pedestrians. I hope I never have to wear a triage tag again.
E-mail Aikins at raikins@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.