The mini version of “Low” by Flo Rida jingles on your cell phone alerting you of a new text message. You flip it open expecting a message resembling, “Hey, dinner @ alliot 2nite@6?” to pop up. Instead, you read, “Alert: Test message 1 of 2: TEST-TEST-TEST SMC ALERT SYSTEM-end-.”
This message, sent out on Tuesday, March 11, was one of two tests carried out by security of St. Michael’s emergency response system, RAVE.
Just one hour after the test, student leaders congregated in the Green Mountain Dining Room to discuss security measures the college is taking. All student association members and residence life employees were required to attend, Dean of Students Mike Samara said.
Attention, attention, the key is prevention
Samara kicked off the meeting by stressing the importance of being aware of problems that other students are dealing with. Bulletins were passed out to students, outlining what they should look for as signs of trouble. Samara encouraged the students to be willing to seek help for a peer.
“This is not about getting someone in trouble, it’s about helping them,” Samara said. “We are not asking students to take on ‘an in your face’ situation, we are simply asking them to come to us.”
Some signs to look for include someone who is experiencing unusual stress, has stopped taking needed medications, is consistently short-tempered, has recently experienced a loss, or has been the target of bullying, according to the bulletin.
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(Photo Illustration by Juli Bongiorno)A more in-depth campus wide response has been in the making for a year-and-a -half, said director of Security Peter Soons, as he addressed the students. In April of last year, then President vanderHeyden appointed a crisis management task force. Appointed members included representation from various elements of the campus, including the library, Information Technology, Student Resource Center, physical plant, and more, Soons said.
The task force was convened to coordinate a rapid communication system, establish an emergency operation center, and to develop a lockdown policy, Soons said. Though an active shooter and hostile intruder plan had already been written, the task force also had to add that policy as part of the college’s emergency response plan, he said
After the most recent tragedy at Northern Illinois University, the college realized they needed to develop the policy quicker than the timeframe they had been working with, Samara said.
“The main concern is, what do we do in those first couple of minutes,” Samara said.
One security development, which came into effect this semester, is the Rave wireless system. Rave is designed to contact St. Michael’s community members to alert them of any problem, according to its Web site. Currently about 1540 students and 200 faculty members are signed up for Rave, Soons said. There is also a new St. Michael’s emergency Web site which publishes the status of the school and has a link to the Hostile Intruder Community Guidelines.
Other security initiatives are in the works. Next October all the classrooms in St. Edmunds Hall will be equipped with telephones. Soons is currently working on developing a way to broadcast an emergency response over the carillon (a loudspeaker) at the top of the chapel.
“It will be some sort of sequence of horns and then a message,” he said. “It will have to be activated in person; it can’t be done by remote.”
The college has also been working with Lt. Doug Allen, of the Colchester Police Department, to finalize security plans. Information between security and the police department regarding the safety of the school is transparent, he says.
“We are at St. Michael’s on a regular basis,” Allen said. “We have meetings with Security and we exchange information with them.”
The main focus of the Colchester Police Department is prevention, though it does not get enough attention, he said.
“On day to day business, prevention is what we do,” Allen said. “Anything we can prevent, we’re ahead of the curve.”
In the event of an emergency, Colchester Police will respond and first try to minimize damage, he said. After the fact, they are present to support emergency services and begin investigating, he said.
Chipping away towards awareness
The next group to hear about security measures will be the academic departments of the college. Soons will be meeting with faculty chairs.
“One of the things I am going to push is for professors to take a moment at the first class of the semester to talk about what happens if this should occur,” he said.
This semester the school has recently held several meetings with residence directors, Student Affairs Personnel, Administrative Council, and on Tuesday night, with student leaders.
The meeting was a way to give students information about security policy being developed and to give them an idea of what to look for, Samara said. The next step is to make sure that meetings which relay the security policy happen in the residence halls, he said.
“We are trying to systematically weave this information out,” he said. “We are not trying to frighten people, but to get people to think about it.”