Neo, what does "lockdown mode" even mean at a campus like that? Of the 26,000 students, only 9,000 or so actually live on campus. The rest live elsewhere in town. Assume you can lock all 9,000 on-campus residents in whatever building they are in at the time. What are you going to do with the other 16,000? When they arrive on campus and all the doors are locked, are you going to tell them to walk/drive back to their apartments? "Sorry, can't let you in, good luck and stay low!"

And don't tell me you can keep everybody off campus - 2600 acres with many, many outside access points. Plus, how are you going to communicate with all of these students? E-mail? Text message? Smoke signals?

The first incident seems to have had the look and feel of a domestic issue; I don't think it's reasonable to assume that the administration or local police should have jumped to the conclusion that everything should be closed and locked down.

This was a horiffic event that hopefully never happens again. And I agree the that the media is acting inappropriately. When you have multiple news stations running 24 hours a day, they try to create conflict especially during a time such as this. Since the media doesn't know all of the facts, they should not speculate into what happened.

And how would you have done that?

You don't let them arrive on campus.
Lockdown means you barricade off the campus, no one in and no one out.

E-mail (b/c every student at VA Tech has a laptop, per one of the news reports) and the good old fashioned "emergency phone call".

And rainman...if you had kids or you were on the campus, would you want to know about a shooting 2 hours later?

rainman....don't waist your breath....you can't reason with Chicken Little, especailly when Chicken Little does not have the capacity to reason.

But I think therein lies the problem. HOW do you notify the students immediately?

As others have mentioned not all live on campus - do you notify them too? and how? call them at home? on their cell phones?

For for those on campus how could you possibly notify every student immediately? They are scattered around a large campus.

Neo,
I went to college with 2,600 students not 26,000 like at VT, and even there it would be virtually impossible to contact all the students and lock down the campus within your "less than 2 hour time frame."

i doubt the phone call would have worked as I am sure those professors are much like mine and all cell phones are to be on silent or off. The e-mail is only effective if everybody is looking at their school supported internal email network, which if you are in class learning you may or may not be. The fact of the matter is short having somebody go from class to class warning about it there was probably no way to insure that everybody would be told.


On another note, the University of Oklahoma campus is locked down at this time after a mysterious person was spotted carrying a rifle near the physical science building. By locked down, no one is being allowed in or out of any buildings.

Plus, what would have been the chances that you "locked in" the gunman with those you were trying to protect???

Imagine the media and parental reaction to that!

"How dare you lock out children up like anaimals just to send them to the slaughter....my Suzie could have ran and saved her life but the school locked her in to meet her death!!!"

Six of one, half dozen of the other.....Some of these people will not be happy with any action the school or police took on this. They are going to critize either way as they usually do.

Notifying the students immediately would have caused an controllable panic. It would have been a knee jerk reaction.
You cannot do it that way Neo.

Holy cow - do you have a snip on this?
(yes - I realize the humor in this bland request given the way of this conversation - but it is not meant to be)

Ok Magic...so let'em go out and about and let 'em all get shot...great way to handle it...

At what point did the campus police turn the initial matter over to the actual police?

Discuss.....

Neo, take a look at this map: VA Tech Map

After you've posted all the police in the city (and then some) at the various entry/exit points to keep students out, who is going to protect the students that are already there and apprehend the shooter?

Campuses Around Nation Address Security

i just read an article that it the lockdown at OU has been lifted.

While authorities investigated the reports OU President David Boren sent an e-mail telling students, faculty and staff to stay in their buildings or dorms until further notice. And an e-mail from Provost Nancy Mergler ordered deans, directors and chairs at the school to keep all individuals within their current buildings until further notice.


Student Scooby Axson says he was in Gaylord Hall about 9:40am when a faculty member ran toward the doors of the building and told everyone inside not to leave. Axson says the lockdown was lifted at about 10:05am.

There is no way to completely prepare for this type of horrific tragedy. The school could have had every possible notification process in place and there still would have been a large number of people not notified.

How do you lock down over 100 buildings and over 30,000 people immediately???? Neo, what is a good solution?

Cell phone lines were jammed because everyone has a cell phone and were using them simutaneously. A lot of students don't check their emails right away in the morning. If you are listening to your iPod you won't hear the messages on the radio. If you are on foot and the warning sirens go off will you react that it is an emergency or do you continue on your way thinking it is a practice drill? So many questions....no perfect answers.

but now ST Edwards in Austin is locked down. Seems like post 9/11 all over again.

I agree with Magic on this... the school officials had no way of knowing exactly what was going on and to inform everyone immediately after the first shootings would have caused an even bigger panic. I remember my college days and gossip spread faster than wildfire. I am sure there were about 200 stories circulating about what happened in the dorms before the second set of shootings took place.

the classic dilemma of reality vs ideality

fine...I'm wrong...

but try telling the parents demanding the President and Chief of Police resign they're wrong...

uhhh, if you know the answer, how bout you tell us so that we can discuss? I did not see it from a cursory search.

I think the early morning timing of these incidents needs to be taken into account, as well. The first incident was reported to have happened at 7:15am. Many students wouldn't even have been awake yet, so sending them an email wouldn't have done any good. Many students would have been on the bus, in the car, on their scooter, walking to class, etc. Would most of them have been on their laptops looking at email during their commute to campus? Highly unlikely. Many students would have been in class starting at 8am or 9am, so had the word gone out at those times, it's unlikely that they were reading email at those times, since they would be paying attention to their professors in classes (hopefully).

I simply have to agree with thomasj and those falling in with his point of view. It's a wonderful goal, but realistically out of reach, that instant communication and instant, perfect reaction would take place after any tragedy. At this moment in time, I don't see that assigning blame does any good at all. After all the facts are in, going back and assessing what happened, what didn't happen, and how to improve emergency plans for the future... yes, I believe this is definitely a good idea. Blaming people and arguing about it NOW? Not useful and an insult to the grieving and those still in the hospital, in my humble opinion. Let's wait, find out what precisely happened, think rationally, honor and bury those killed first, then discuss, debate, argue away. Priorities seem out of whack with this instantaneous "blame game" in the media, to me.

I went to a university that had 40,000 undergraduates and spanned hundreds of acres, and the logistics that would have been involved in getting information out to all students on and off campus and "locking down" in under 2 hours boggles my mind. There were many incidents on campus while I was there - a break-in, a murder, a sucicide, a fire in a dormitory - that I didn't hear about until *2 days* later, let alone 2 hours. It's just not realistic to expect the university to have notified everyone and locked down so quickly.

Are campus police not 'real' police?