Longwood University has taken a stronger stance when it comes to on-campus safety. In a recent meeting with the Board of Visitors (BOV), seven policies were changed or updated, including those concerning campus safety. Longwood Police Chief Bob Beach said, "The university has pulled a work group together to look at published policies and making sure that they are reviewed."
Vice President for Student Affairs Dr. Tim Pierson certainly understands what kind of a process it was to approve these policies. "This gun policy may have gotten as much attention as any policy I have ever dealt with."
The reason for the attention is due to events such as the Virginia Tech shooting in April 2007. According to Pierson, the issue of weapons on campus has become bigger as a result of recent school shootings. Campuses are being put under the microscope for their policies. "Everything that we do as a campus is looked at."
Another reason the policy was updated had to do with recent legislature going through the Virginia General Assembly. The Second Amendment of the Constitution allows for anyone, including students, to carry a weapon on public property, which includes a university such as Longwood. The only thing stopping students from carrying guns is a university policy. Until recently, that was not the case.
Following the BOV meeting, no student is allowed to keep a firearm in a residence hall. In addition, no faculty member is permitted to carry a firearm on campus. That still does not stop students from bringing guns to Longwood. Beach admits that plenty of students bring guns to school for hunting purposes. The guns have to be stored in the Longwood University Police Department station in the lower level of Dorrill Dining Hall.
The new policy also states any non-student or non-faculty member can carry a weapon on campus provided they have the appropriate permits for owning and carrying a gun. Those people cannot carry their firearms into any Longwood-related or sponsored event such as a basketball game.
The policy change is to ensure a safer campus. Beach has been a police officer for 42 years and does not want to see a shooting on Longwood's campus. According to Beach, it is even difficult for a trained law enforcement officer to act accordingly. "The better way," said Beach, "is to abstain from allowing [people] to bring guns here."
In case of a scenario like a shooting, Longwood does have its emergency alert system. In the case of the BOV meeting, the policy was simply just clarified. In the past, students were notified by text messages, emails and a siren system. The siren system was operated separately from the text and email alert system until the December meetings.
Beach said part of the goal was to combine things into one format for people to understand better. In order for the alert to be sent out, the threat must be real and life-threatening. Beach said, "Our responsibility, upon receiving information, is to throw every resource we have at verifying what the threat is."
As soon as the threat is verified, the decision can be made to trigger the alert. "Anybody on this staff can make that decision," Beach said. That includes supervisors, dispatchers and senior officers. It cuts out the process of having to go through a panel to decide whether or not to press a button.
All of the alerts are made at the communication center in the LUPD dispatch center. It is simply a room with several computers, televisions and radios. All it takes is the punch of one button for the email, text message and siren to be triggered. From there, students and faculty get instructions on what to do and how to stay safe. "I want people to know that when that siren goes off unannounced or when a text goes out, that it is serious," Beach said.
In addition, Longwood's homepage (longwood. edu) changes during the time of a crisis. It is taken over and run by the Office of Public Relations as the crisis communication website. On a regular basis, the crisis communication website offers background information on the site as well as a place for students to sign up for updates. The site is only taken over when there is a serious emergency.
Longwood Director of Web Communication Dave Hooper said the Office of Public Relations has used a section of the site for smaller warnings such as hurricanes. Hooper also mentioned that the crisis communication website could undergo some changes. Those changes would include visual changes to the look of the site and functional changes as well.
Pierson and his staff work with the Office of Public Relations when an incident occurs. Together, they create the messages sent out to faculty and students. The goal from their end of the spectrum is to manage the communication from people during a crisis.
In addition to the crisis website, Hooper said social media may play a stronger role in getting the messages out to students. "We are starting to use Facebook and Twitter more than we ever have." This would be carried out through the official pages of Longwood University. Hooper said if separate accounts were made, then "it would require everyone to be a fan of that page."
Hooper said his department may start pointing people, namely students, to those social media outlets soon. A big part of the reason for this shift is because of their popularity and reliability. "If something came through and destroyed our equipment," said Hooper, "we know that we could still get the information out that way."
Longwood has not had many incidences where crisis management was needed. The recent incident involving tornadoes did require use of these systems. When and if there is an emergency in the future, Longwood simply wants the systems to be ready. Of the systems Longwood has in place, Beach said, "None of it is perfect, but it works pretty well for us."
