By Robert Palazzolo

As the national conversation moves forward on how to prevent and mitigate mass-casualty shooting sprees, especially on college campuses, Fordham Public Safety and United Student Government (USG) have joined together to prepare for the worse happening at Rose Hill. The School Shooting Protection Initiative was introduced in USG’s midyear report this past month.

USG VP of Health and Security Brianna Cali, FCRH ’16, said USG took interest in the topic after hearing of a series of statistics and recommendations put out by the Federal government. These recommendations were made to reduce the damage caused by mass shooting incidents. As a result of this information, Cali began the School Shooting Protection Initiative through USG.

“The initiative is focusing on raising that awareness among the student body so that they know that there are things that they can do for themselves, in the interval before help arrives,” explained Cali.

Cali and Carroll  in order to identify other areas where Fordham should take additional steps to secure the campus.

“We decided locks and window shades would be the most effective right now, for students,” said Cali.

Carroll negotiated with the administration, and managed to secure funding to replace all the classroom locks on campus. The new ones, in addition to being strengthened, could be opened by a master key only in the possession of Public Safety.

Carroll said this is to avoid students falling into a potential trap.

“If you were secured inside a room, and all of a sudden you heard outside ‘this is the police, this is security, this is public safety, come on out now,’ you open the door and come out and it’s the bad guy still out there…so rather than you come running out, we’ll come and say when it’s all clear,” said Carroll.

The upgrades to locks and window shades are reported to be completed soon, though Carroll declined to give an exact date.

Central to the campaign is a video produced by the Department of Homeland Security called “Run. Hide. Fight. Surviving and Active Shooter Event.” The title explains the basic instructions. In the event of a mass shooting, Homeland Security recommends the following: first, try to run away. Second, find a safe and secure place to hide if running away is impossible. And third, if all else fails, fight for your life.

Cali said that instructions like the ones contained in the video can save the lives of those waiting for help to arrive.

“In that time interval, once—God forbid—the first shot is fired, you need to have that time to be able to reduce your panic, stay calm and think ‘What have I been prepared to do? What am I aware of?’” said Cali.

As part of the Protection Initiative, Cali and other members of USG consulted with John Carroll, associate vice president of public safety. They found that many of the recommendations the federal government has given recently have already been made policy at Fordham—and had been policy, in some cases, for years.

First of all, the aforementioned “Run. Hide. Fight.” video has been posted on Public Safety’s website .

Carroll detailed Public Safety’s procedures for the response to any potential shooter entering campus. The priority would be informing the students of the shooter’s presence.

“The first thing we’d do would probably [be] a public address system announcement,” explained Carroll. 

The bright yellow emergency phones with blue lights also serve as a public announcement system. “We have an ability here at this office to speak to the entire 85 acres,” he said.

Public Safety’s plan also includes simultaneously sending out an emergency text to all phones on campus, continuing to send updates as the situation progresses, and cutting into all TVs on campus, to broadcast the initial alert and updates.

“Right down to bullhorns, if that’s what we need to do,” said Carroll.

Within Public Safety, there are always at least two supervisors that have over two decades NYPD experience. The supervisors are armed and have bulletproof vests. In the event of a shooting, the supervisors, possibly including Carroll himself, would be the ones running towards the shooter.

If Carroll left to supervise the scene, senior director of communications Bob Howe would take over the alarms and communications systems.

The supervisors would attempt to contain the shooter until the police arrived. If need be, they would open fire.

“The whole goal here is to prevent any loss of life,” said Carroll.

According to Cali, USG is largely satisfied with Public Safety’s long time emergency response plan for a campus shooter. Questions still lingered, however, over whether an organized shooter drill would be a good idea for preparing students for the worst-case scenario.  

“We could do that,” said Carroll.  “But I don’t know if that’s productive at this moment.”

Cali said she has been looking at alternative methods, acknowledging the complexity of holding a drill over 85 acres.  

“So some schools do it completely volunteer, they’ll close off a part of their campus, whoever wants to participate is totally welcome to,” Cali said. “And there’s other schools that do a one-hour lockdown—they require everybody to watch the video, and then they have discussions afterwards about that.”

Whether or not a student-involved, active shooter drill ever occurs, Public Safety and USG agreed that student awareness of safety procedures is key. But awareness has been lacking. Cali said that even she herself was unaware of the “Run. Hide. Fight.” video at first, despite the fact that the video is posted on Public Safety’s webpage.

“Since I was interested in this topic and I still didn’t even know about it, I was very concerned about the rest of the student body, because it’s not something that everyone is aware of,” said Cali.

Cali said there is a Homeland Security program that makes wallet-sized cards with emergency procedures printed on them, which could be an option. She also said there will likely be more posts on the USG website, and that more emails detailing emergency procedures are coming.  

“Run, hide, fight—its three words, and at the end of the day, it could make a huge difference,” she said.