As a professor, I’m very concerned that little attention was paid to campus security before this incident. I haven’t seen any announcements from Oahu’s other universities or on HPU Pipeline. Readers can email me the URL if they read anything about the island’s private universities.
Are there any universities on Oahu with a lockdown plan ready to implement when their campus facilities are threatened? A Google search on lockdown at the University of Hawaii yields procedures for locking a network user’s account if they violate acceptable user practices. There’s one PDF file from an emergency planning subcommittee meeting from December 1, 2006. that meeting focused on how UH staff could handle a natural disaster like a flood or earthquake.
In the aftermath of the Virgina Tech shootings, the University of Hawaii at Manoa announced that they have had three different notificiation methods to tell students, staff and faculty about campus security issues:
- E-mail announcements
- Phone trees, in which UH employees are assigned to call a specific list of UH employees
- The public address system in the Campus Center
According to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, officials are also considering sending emergency announcements to local radio and television stations. Of course, the stations would have to be ready to receive the announcements and break into their programming schedule.
The list doesn’t include an SMS announcement system like Mobile Campus. A text messaging system might be more effective, as all subscribed users who have their mobile phones powered on would receive the same message at approximately the same time. The three methods that UH uses require people to be online, on a calling list, or at a specific location on campus.
Liviu Lebrescu survived the Holocaust, emigrated to the United States, and taught engineering at Tech. Lebrescu tried to block the door of his classroom while his students jumped from the windows. He was shot to death by VT senior Cho Seung-Hui yesterday, along with engineering professors G.V. Loganathan, Kevin Garanta and 27 students attending classes in Norris Hall.
All they wanted to do was learn. Virginia Tech’s lackadaisical security response let a gunman who had already killed a freshman and a senior RA two hours earlier walk into a classroom building, lock the front doors, and start shooting. The chair of the English department had been told about the gunman’s disturbing submissions in creative writing courses. Cho was an English major.
The courts may end up deciding if Tech’s response was negligent, criminal or a horrible mistake.
But no one can bring the 32 victims back.
Previous posts:
April 16:
4:20 pm HT: Virginia tech releases warning e-mails
12:51 pm HT: Virginia Tech waited 2 hours before notifying campus of initial shootings
9:45 am HT: Virginia Tech shootings highlight the need for campus emergency notification system
April 11: University of Florida and Mobile Campus
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