Terror Drill Reveals Critical School Security Deficiency
Students and faculty don’t read administration e-mail alerts. I like the part where the “armed intruder” announces he’s going to kill the student with the lowest GPA. That’s really adding humiliation to terror. Charlotte Observer:
Last Friday, an intruder entered a classroom in Moore Hall at Elizabeth City State University and pointed what appeared to be a gun at assistant professor Jingbin Wang.
The man ordered students in Wang’s American foreign policy class to line up against a wall and threatened to kill the student with the lowest grade-point average.
“I was prepared to die,” Wang recalled this week.
Ten minutes after the siege began, police stormed the class and subdued the intruder. His weapon, it turned out, was red and plastic — a fake. So was the entire incident.
Anthony Brown, vice chancellor for student affairs, says the university — in the northeast corner of the state — was testing its response to shootings that have shaken campuses around the country. “The intent was not to frighten them, but to test our system, and also to test the response of the security,” Brown said.
The drill was conducted eight days after a gunman stormed a Northern Illinois University classroom, killing five before turning the gun on himself.
Brown said students, staff and faculty were notified five days in advance that a drill would take place. The word, he said, went out via e-mail and text messages.
Not everyone got the word.
At 1:31 p.m. on Friday, e-mail and text messages kicked off the drill with an announcement: “This is a test. ECSU is holding a test drill where an armed intruder will enter a room in Moore Hall and be detained by campus police.”
The mock intruder, a campus police officer, carried a red plastic model gun, according to a university news release.
Wang, who teaches history and political science, said Tuesday in a telephone interview he was having a class discussion when a man came to the door and said he wanted to talk.
“Suddenly the man pointed the gun at me,” he said.
Wang, who is Chinese, said guns are not allowed in his native country and he did not know whether the gun was real. “I saw the gun but didn’t have too much time to think about that,” he said. “Everyone thought it was real.”
Wang said some students thought the gun was fake, but they were not sure. “I was the guy who was feeling the gun on my back,” he said.
After 10 minutes, the class heard people talking outside the door, and campus police rushed in. “Even after this was over, nobody explained it,” Wang said.
He said colleagues told him students in another class blocked a door with a table and chair — just as students did at Virginia Tech last April when 32 students were killed by a gunman.
During ECSU’s drill, some students sent text messages to their parents, Wang said. Another staffer told Wang that students said they were prepared to jump out of a window.
University Chancellor Willie Gilchrist said in a statement that the drill was a learning experience.
I was asked to do something like that when I was in college, by a Journo 101 instructor who wanted to startle her students. It was an intelligence test, to see who figured out it was an assignment and started paying attention, taking notes. It was a blast. Several of us from the school paper got toy guns and bandanas and came in yelling, sticking the guns in people’s faces, telling them to shut up. Pushed the prof around and shouted some ridiculous demands. One guy, who failed the intelligence test, started getting up to come to the lovely young instructor’s aid and got angry when I told him to shut up and pushed him back in his seat. But while we were parading around shouting and waving our toy guns, a couple of students’ lightbulbs flicked on, and they started taking notes.
Note to post-modern wannabe heroes: Lighten up. It was a cartoonish exercise in 1981, utterly unrealistic in all aspects. Go find a plane with some imams on it.
Topics: academia
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:43 pm on Wednesday, February 27, 2008
6 Responses to “Terror Drill Reveals Critical School Security Deficiency”
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February 27th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
I would say the only person who passed the test was the guy who confronted you. And further, you failed the test by not noticing that, Jules.
February 27th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
Doesn’t know what a real gun looks like? Well, given modifications like this I can understand that. But it’s sad that people don’t understand that a real gun can look fake; check out a Glock from a distance. There’s a reason why cops call it “The Tupperware Gun”. You just never know these days.
But this drill is a good idea. More realism in training is a good thing.
And to add to your story, Jules……the city police made use of some abandoned homes next to my office as a training site. They were due for demolition any way, so they used real smoke, a stun grenade, and blank ammo. This was downtown, and maybe 200 feet from our building.
Like the university, we put the word out. And, like the university, not everyone got the word. A lot of people were surprised by the sudden small arms fire.
But did they panic? No, instead, they watched the training exercise from the building, through windows. One guy asked me what was going on. I told him, and then asked, “If you didn’t know they were using blank ammo, why were you exposing yourself to potential gunfire? Ever hear of stray bullets?”
WHOOSH! That went right over his head.
A lot of people simply don’t understand firearms. And that could be their downfall in a hostage situation. They don’t necessarily need to be qualified with weapons, but they sure ought to understand the basic theory. Ignorance is NOT bliss.
February 27th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
Actually, this is really bothering me! Admittedly, it was a throwaway class (journalism), but you seem to be implying that the answer to unexplained aggression is to take notes! WTH?
February 27th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
Blogagog got it right. The guy who pushed back had the right idea. You and the journo instructor were fools.
February 28th, 2008 at 1:58 am
To reinforce Jules note, such incidents are standard fare in journalism classes. They need not involve guns and criminals; they need only be something highly unusual, even ridiculous. The point is to get the students to observe.
Whilst working on the high school newspaper (yes, I was once a student journalist, my secret shame is out for all to see), our teacher pulled such a stunt, without pretend mayhem, but she did sic the “fire marshal” (another teacher) on us, after we put up a fake fireplace for Christmas.
We had to write a report of what we saw. I won’t mention who got the only A+.
February 28th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Frankly, in today’s climate, if I did such a thing, I’d be afraid of getting shot by some student who decided to ignore the campus gun ban.