BY CORBIN MCGUIRE, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
There have been at least 161 school shootings in America, or nearly an average of one a week, since 2013, according to everytownresearch.org
With tragedies like these on the rise, Bellarmine University took the initiative to provide three violent in- truder informational sessions for staff, students and faculty in Hilary’s on Jan. 12.
The training, conducted by Uni- versity of Kentucky community affairs officer Alan Saylor, covered what to do in the case of an active shooter. It included a video presentation, “When Lightning Strikes,” which is much like the “Run. Hide. Fight.” video shared with the campus last semester, said Vice President for Student Affairs Dr. Helen Grace Ryan.
Approximately 35 faculty members attended the 10 a.m. part-time and full-time faculty information session with Saylor. The 10 a.m. time slot, as well as the noon session offered for faculty and staff, conflicted greatly with many faculty members’ schedules because 9:25 a.m. and 12:15 p.m. are popular class times.
The student training at 11 a.m. of- fered a nearly identical presentation except not a single student attended, outside of two student reporters from The Concord.
The student training was advertised in the Daily Knight, which may be the problem because many students do not take the time to skim their daily news source.
“I rarely read the Daily Knight. It just gets so repetitive,” junior Marissa Thomas said.
Students received both the Daily Knight and an email from Ryan and yet many students said they felt confused about what the training was or did not think it was necessary to attend.
Regarding the email sent to students, junior Jessica Bacallao said: “I only read the heading, and I thought the training was just for faculty. The people who did read it probably thought that nothing bad would happen here. We are on Bellarmine’s campus.”
The apathy shown towards train- ing such as this is a true reflection of the fact that we as a university are underprepared for violent intruders on campus, and if we are to become more equipped, students, faculty and staff need to be at these sessions.
At the very least, advertising for events like these needs to improve because many students, who admittedly may fail to check their emails, didn’t even know the event was happening.
Attracting large audiences to these events may also require offering train- ing on multiple days and at various times or making attendance mandatory. In this case, training would need to fit into the schedules of students, faculty and staff. It is also possible that the event should be rethought entirely.
“I thought it would be boring, and I do not want to sit through that be- causeIdoitalldayinclass.Iamso over lectures and demonstrations,” Thomas said.
Sessions made up of a small lecture and lengthier practical training, in which attendees could actually test out their new skills in hypothetical situations, may get students’ attention more than a lecture alone.
“I’m a very hands-on person. I like doing stuff rather than just sitting there,” Thomas said. “We’re college students. We do not want to listen to more people talking about things.”
If students are to gain the skills they need to be safe in the case of an active shooter on campus, more real-life training may help put such possibilities into perspective before it actually happens.
“Until it happens to me or someone I love, I’m not going to care about it,” Thomas said.
In the case of an active shooter, it is likely that students would look to faculty for direction. Training faculty in the buildings in which they teach would be helpful because of the unique layout of each building. Faculty members should feel prepared for an intruder in their own classrooms, not just in Hilary’s.
While sessions like Saylor’s may offer the tools to survive a shooting, the open floor plans and glass walls of recently added classrooms and study spaces appear to work against us in the case of an active shooter on campus.
“Security should always be consulted and involved in the design of a new facility or the renovation of an existing site. New and modern designs often do not consider active shooter scenarios and the risks it may create,” Michael Finklestein said in his article in securitymagazine.com concerning balancing a building’s design with active-shooter threats.
Finklestein also discusses the irony of the “Run, Hide, Fight” method, in which employees and students are told to lockdown and barricade themselves in response to active shooters, when the walls in the facility are made from tempered glass.
In the violent intruder informational session for faculty, Saylor discussed options such as leaving a building with glass windows and doors.
“Can bullets go through glass as you’re leaving? Sure they can,” Saylor said.
If it is not safe to leave a glass building during a shooting on campus, it is not safe to stay behind a glass wall in a classroom. If we are going to train people to barricade themselves in classrooms, we need to place safety over aesthetics and construct future buildings with emergencies like these in mind.
In the faculty session, Saylor often used the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Con- necticut, as an example of why some survive in an active shooter event and others do not.
Since the tragedy that occurred at Sandy Hook over four years ago, we now know that the gunman who took the lives of 20 children and six staff members entered the building by shooting a large hole in the window next to the school’s front door, according to Claire Martin’s 2014 article, “Out of Tragedy, a Protective Glass for Schools” in The New York Times.
“Bulletproof whiteboards to help teachers shield students inside class- rooms” and thin glass, called School Guard Glass, that “stays intact when bullets or blunt objects like bats or sledgehammers strike it” are some of many new methods schools are now using to keep students safe, Martin wrote. In the training sessions, Saylor said police are on the scene an average of 14 minutes after the first gunshot. Philip Santore, a security expert consulted for Martin’s article, said the School Guard Glass holds up for more than 10 minutes. This would leave a gunman only four minutes in a building if the 14-minute timeframe of an active shooting outlined by Saylor holds true.
However, according to Assistant Vice President of Facilities and Grounds Jeff Dean, neither the glass walls in Centro nor the dry erase boards are bulletproof.
This is disappointing because the price of the School Guard Glass per door, including installation, is only $1,000 to $1,200. The glass is also lightweight enough that it can be used to replace existing doors and windowpanes.
Bellarmine officials should begin making some potentially lifesaving changes to its classrooms and buildings as well as incorporating these advance- ments into future construction.
With an average of one school shoot- ing every week, we can’t wait until we are forced to care to begin making training sessions accessible and building safe spaces for students, faculty and staff on Bellarmine’s campus.