“…Everyone’s running, getting away from the windows. We all raninto the little back room. People are getting under the tables, they are scared. We flipped the tables, covered the windows and locked the door. We started looking around, making sure that everyone had gotten into the room. All we knew was someone had a gun on campus.
Of course we took immediate action.” Said Longwood student Natalie Joseph speaking on the situation that transpired in Greenwood Library on Sept. 14. The situation that students were reacting to turned out to be a strong-armed robbery on campus. Meaning the suspect had no weapon to speak of. Unfortunately for many students in the library that night, the details were unclear.
At around 9:30 p.m. on that evening, the university alarm system went off, followed by a verbal message. The siren could not be heard inside the library, nor could the accompanying message. Longwood student Jacob Harvey was just outside the library and was the first to warn those inside.
“I’ve been here for three years, so I know that normally it’s just a test. It was nine [at night] so I thought it was weird. So I waited for the lady to come over the PA system and say it was just a test. She comes over the loud speaker and she said something like ‘someone is armed on campus’ so my flight or fight kicked in and my friend and I ran into the library.”
When Harvey went into the library he realized no one had heard thealarm and he tried to let students know what was happening. “There is a gunman on campus you all need to get away from the windows and move to the back of the building.” Harvey continued, “I ran around the library making sure people were aware of what was going on because everyone was really confused and then finally the email went out warning everyone.”
Harvey also claimed that the announcement over the PA system stated that there was someone armed on campus. What is also concerning is that between the time the alarm went off and the email went out, Harvey stated that there was a five-minute delay.
“In hindsight, maybe we did overreact, but I feel like campus police left us hanging. In the future, for our safety, it needs to be handled [with] better communication, [and the announcements] need to be more direct and to the point. It was very open-ended and I didn’t know what to think, the staff was not on board," said Harvey.
Meanwhile the students that were barricaded into a backroom in the library were in a state of panic. They reacted to the situation in the moment as if there was an actual shooter on campus. “People were calling their homes and families. Given the situation, they were overreacting, but they didn’t know what else was going on so I don’t blame them,” stated Harvey.
Joseph decided to go out and talk to Ken, the librarian on duty. He had said to tell everyone the police stated to remain in the area for the next 30 to 45 minutes, and try to stay in groups.
No staff member ever came back to report to the students that had gathered themselves in the back room. When they reached out to Ken Vaiden, one of the staff members on duty that night, he had received a reply from Tammy Hines that said they did not wish to comment and to please speak with campus police.
Many students did not think to check their email during that time; both Joseph and Harvey claimed to have not received a text message alert. In fact, Joseph claimed that not one person in the library that night stated that they had received a text message from eCampus alerts.
Chief Beach, Chief of Longwood Police, commented on the system’s alert system, “If you have a Longwood email you are signed up automatically, but you must sign your phone up also, we generally do that during student orientation.”
Beach went on to say that staff is instructed to handle these kinds of situations. “Staff should alert the students to that situation and assist them based off of what is going on. I know someone had called and said that students in the library had barricaded them in a room and I asked what the staff was doing. I’m not sure who was there at that time, I’m not sure if it was student staff. We have a program called ‘code red’ and it is coming up on October 8.” Beach encourages all staff to attend the event on subjects regarding proper precautions in handling these times of alerts and warnings.
Despite much speculation on the event and seemingly quite a bit of miscommunication between police, staff and students, there was one thing that all involved agreed on; the student’s quick and caring reaction to a situation that was not fully understood.
Joseph summed it up stating, “One thing I could praise my peers about is, I am a board of visitor’s representative and remember sitting in that meeting a week before, and Dr. Tim Pierson said the one thing about Longwood University is that students look out for students.” She continued, “In that moment, when people thought there was a gun on campus I saw people grabbing their friends, grabbing people they didn’t know, making sure people were out of bathrooms, out of study rooms, and helping other people.”