MU Res. Life braces for Virginia Tech impact
Published April 17, 2007
Shootings at two locations on the Virginia Tech campus left 33 people, including the gunman, dead on Monday. It is the largest mass shooting in U.S. history and has drawn attention to schools' emergency policies.
Virginia Tech President Charles Steger said the university's police department received a report of shooting at West Ambler Johnston Hall at approximately 7:15 a.m. Police discovered two students killed inside the residence hall. According to the Virginia Tech Web site, approximately 895 students reside in the hall.
Steger said police received a report of a shooting in a general classroom in Norris Hall about two hours later. According to a news release on the Virginia Tech Web site, police found the doors barricaded when they arrived. After making their way into the building, they heard gunshots on the second floor.
When they reached the second floor, the gunshots stopped. Police found the gunman, who had apparently killed himself.
At approximately 10 a.m., the Virginia Tech University Relations Office posted an alert to its Web site advising students and staff that there was a gunman on campus. The alert said to stay indoors and away from windows.
In a 4:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time news conference, the president said police and officials believed the first shooting was an isolated incident and consequently did not close campus until the second shooting took place.
MU Residential Life Director Frankie Minor said MU has a system in place to deal with emergency situations in residence halls.
"I think we've got a good security system in place," he said. "Any time a situation occurs at another institution is a good time to review our policies to see if there is anything else we can do to improve."
But Minor said the department has not prepared specifically for an active shooter on campus.
"We've not trained specifically for a mass-killing or a gunman, but we have a variety of situations we have trained for that can be applied to a lot of other situations," Minor said.
MU police Capt. Brian Weimer said the department has trained for a situation similar to that at Virginia Tech.
"The department has policies and procedures for that type of situation in addition to conducting training in order to respond to them," he said.
Weimer also said decisions to take action, such as locking down campus, would be made during the situation.
"Until we know what the circumstances are, we can't make a decision," Weimer said. "If we think it would help the situation, we would lock down the campus. It all depends on the circumstances."
Minor said locking down the residence halls is a simple procedure.
"We have the ability to lock down the residence halls in a matter of seconds," he said. "We can lock them down to students living in that facility only or lock them down altogether."
He would not speculate about when the halls might be closed in a similar situation.
"We would make the decision to lock down halls based on the information we have available at the time," he said.
Residential Life is also making efforts to offer assistance to students who might be having problems dealing with the shootings at Virginia Tech.
"One thing we are doing is we are trying to identify all the students in the residence halls from Virginia and also identifying students from Colorado," Minor said. "We have had MU students from Colorado who attended Columbine High School, and sometimes these tragedies can trigger bad memories for people who have suffered a tragedy like this before."
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