VaHigherEd.com

The Chancellor’s campus safety taskforce held its second of two meetings last night at the Annandale Campus of Northern Virginia Community College.

The discussion largely focused on the issues of weapons on campus, emergency response training for students, and college faculty and staff and emergency communication resources.

One speaker, a military veteran in his fifties and a member of the Fairfax County CERT team urged the panel to allow adults, over the age of 21 to carry firearms on campus, “I want to be able to take care of myself in an emergency.”

His sentiments were shared by others speakers, including one who said he had a concealed carry permit and, while a student at Northern Virginia Community College, “carried my weapon in my book bag everyday on campus” despite the school policy prohibiting it.

A member of the college’s police force urged caution among the speakers regarding firearms on campus, “No on wants to infringe on your rights,” he said.  But if there is an emergency involving a shooter, having other armed individuals involved could be a recipe for trouble.  “The worst case scenario is that an officer responding to the emergency - who is trained to shoot to kill - doesn’t know who is the good guy and who is the bad guy.  What if we shoot the wrong guy?  Nobody wants that.”

Others speakers urged more emergency response training for college students, faculty and staff, including CPR training and training students on how to react to classroom threats.  “None of us,” said one woman, “Can have too much emergency response training.”

Many of the speakers also urged the panel to consider the unique safety needs of students attending night classes, when there are fewer people on campus.  They would like to see more signage explaining how to contact the campus police.  One student suggested that instructors be urged to place emergency contact information on the class syllabus.  One adjunct teacher said, “We have to have more information for contacting the police at night.”

The last topic that drew a lot of comment was finding ways to communicate with students in emergency situtations.  “We have to layer our communications,” said one NVCC administrator.  “We have the highway alert radio systems; we have the emergency contact information wallet-sized cards; we have the website; we have the text messaging people can sign up for.  We have to come from many different angles to get the word to as many people as possible.”

The final meeting of the taskforce will occur Thursday, October 11 at Virginia Western Community College, Business Science Building in the Auditorium (first floor).  The meeting will occur from 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm.  The session will begin with a brief welcome and introduction from the taskforce and then focus on public comments.  To ensure as many people as possible can speak to the taskforce, a time limit may be placed on individual comments.

If you would like to send comments to the taskforce, you can do via a dedicated email address:  myvoice@vccs.edu.

Posted by Jeff Kraus