Students came face to face with administration officials
Tuesday at a forum designed to seek input about a safety
report recently released by VCU.
The report is the result of a work group established by
President Eugene P. Trani to examine the Virginia Tech
Review Panel safety recommendations issued in the wake
of the mass shootings at Tech last April.
John Bennett, senior vice president of finance and
administration, addressed both the safety measures in
place before last April’s shootings and the features added
in the past year.
Bennett said the two emergency sirens added last
September have had their pitch changed after complaints
that they sounded like fire engines. Eight sirens have been
added in a ring around campus that are pointed inward to
maximize the volume. Bennett said these are the “largest,
most powerful sirens commercially available.”
Bennett also stressed the importance of the emergency
text-messaging system, which he said 15,000 VCU-community
members have signed up for since its introduction
last fall.
“If you have a personal force field, don’t sign up for
text-messaging,” Bennett said. “If you don’t, sign up.”
One student asked why some students have been receiving
the messages late or not receiving them at all.
Bennett said each commercial service handles text
messages differently, and – as a result – some students
might receive the messages sooner than others.
“That’s another reason why it’s important that everybody
should sign up, because then, it’s not a matter of ‘well,
the Verizon guy was asleep that day,’ ” Bennett said. “If
50 people around you get a text message, then you know
something’s up.”
Another student raised concerns about the speed at
which officials could decide to issue emergency alerts.
“How fast do you think after something’s spotted can
you get information out?” she asked. “Because that’s the
critical time.”
Bennett said the response would depend on the situation.
“If you press the red button on an emergency-response phone, we can get an officer there within 90
seconds,” Bennett said. “In the kind of emergency
we’re talking about . the hardest task for anyone
involved in emergency planning is to figure out
what’s happening.”
A criminal-justice student said she and her
classmates tested many of the emergency telephones
last fall to find many of them were not functioning.
The student said the group told their professor but
did not know how the VCU Police Department
addressed their concerns.
Bennett later said VCU police would check all
314 emergency phones by the end of the week.
NBC 12 anchor Aaron Gilchrist, an adjunct-faculty
member who moderated the forum, said in stories
he has covered since the Virginia Tech shootings,
many officials stressed student involvement.
“Every person that I’ve spoken to, every expert,
every emergency person . has said the student
is the first line,” Gilchrist said. “So when you
see something not right – regardless of what it is
– you have to make sure something happens to
fix that, not simply tell the professor but take it
to the next step.”
A group of students expressed concern with the
safety of areas off campus, saying they recently had
heard several shots fired in the area around their
apartment.
Bennett outlined the VCU Police-jurisdiction
boundaries and said they are required to respond
to such incidents within that area.
“It’s very hard to know where shots were fired,
because sound is not a reliable indicator,” Bennett
said. “If you live within that boundary or have any
concern, call 828-1234-an officer will respond.”
Charles Klink, assistant vice provost for student
affairs, presented the findings of the Counseling
Trouble Students committee, which he said focused
on the idea of promoting university wellness.
“Really – at the base of this – if we can, develop
a community that cares about one another, that
goes a long way towards preventing violence and
getting people the help they need,” Klink said.
University News Services Director Pamela Lepley,
who chaired the Communications and Awareness
committee, agreed with Klink.
“The committee determined that we really need
to institute this ‘culture of caring,’ ” Lepley said.
“That would be the biggest enhancement to safety
we could have.”
As the forum concluded, a student expressed
frustration about the VCU Escort Service, which
she said required her to wait for her ride at 3 a.m.
on the street instead of waiting in a VCU building.
She also said she has been forced to wait up to an
hour to be picked up.
Bennett said the three-van service receives around
1,400 calls a week, with an average pick-up time
of 11 minutes. He said one of the main problems
is too many are relying on the vans when they do
not need them.
“Would it surprise you to find out that the
incidents of calls go up when it rains?” Bennett
asked. “It’s not secure transportation then, is it?
Therein starts the problem. We get calls that
say, ‘Can you pick me up from such and such
a bar?’ What happens is the service degrades to
everybody.”
Faris Ostrowski, a forensic-biology major who
recently transferred from Virginia Tech, said the
forum was successful.
“I do think, towards the end, some of the
questions were just being breezed over, especially
the questions about the escort service,” Ostrowski
said. “We should have taken more time to discuss
stuff like that. Overall, I think it went well; they
definitely should do more of these.”
The safety report can be viewed at www.
safetyreport.vcu.edu.