Campus Safety Releases the ‘CrisisManager’ Application
Campus Safety released CrisisManager last Thursday, a smartphone application that provides information about the Academy’s response to possible serious events. CrisisManager is available on iPhone and Androids to all students, faculty and staff. The application features icons with information that range, scenario-wise, from situations involving an active shooter to winter storm to a hazardous material spill.
Two years ago, the dean of students at Phillips Academy Andover showed Dean of Students Melissa Mischke her plan for the CrisisManager app, hosted through the company SchoolDude. The plan featured all of Andover’s information and protocols. Mischke then mentioned the set-up to Exeter’s Campus Safety Services.
“You’re going to do what you do in a drill in real life, so we want to get it as close as possible to the real thing.”
Director of Campus Safety Paul Gravel said it was a “no-brainer” when Mischke told him about the app. “It was a great idea,” he said, “especially where we are really striving to work on better performing in our lockdown drills and in our mass movement drills.”
Before CrisisManager, Campus Safety published binders that had all of the Academy’s emergency protocols and distributed them to the Incident Response Team (IRT), which is comprised of Principal Lisa Macfarlane, Assistant Principal Ronald Kim, Dean of Faculty Ethan Shapiro and several other department directors. Campus Safety also used to provide a 30-page flipchart of protocols for every room and office. Students didn’t have access to this information.
“In this day and age it seems silly to have a flipchart or some sort of poster when you can use an app which is what most people are used to using anyways,” Mischke said. “It just seemed up with the times.”
Gravel explained that his team only began researching the app a year ago because Gravel had just been hired as director when he was first told about it. He wanted to review and update the protocols and response plans. His team presented the new information as well as the app proposal to IRT for approval. Once approved, its members moved on to creating Exeter’s plan within the same SchoolDude application system Andover uses. “It was very labor intensive,” Gravel said. “We had to cut and paste and pretty much put in all of the information in manually, so it took us a lot longer than we thought it was going to take.”
There are two versions of the plan—one that is available only to IRT, which has more detailed emergency response plans, and one that is available to everyone else. The detailed plans have limited access for safety concerns. Gravel doesn’t want everybody to have the information. In the event that somebody wanted to cause harm or danger to the school, they would know where everyone would be and how they would react.
In addition to this app, Campus Safety is researching the possibility of an app that students can use to share their location and send alerts if they are in danger. “I’m always looking for proactive ways to protect students,” Gravel said.
Among the students, there were mixed reactions to the new app and whether it was necessary, or even worth downloading. Though she has not downloaded it yet, lower Gabby Brown thinks it will be worth it once she gets it. “In a real life emergency, people can panic and forget exact instructions, which can be very dangerous,” she said.
Lower Troy Marrero pointed out that not every school is prepared for a crisis and that he feels “safe in the hands of Campus Safety with this new app.”
On the contrary, upper Harry Saunders didn’t feel obligated to download the app. “Adolescents feel like they’re invincible, so they don’t prepare for disasters,” he admitted. “I also don’t have any space on my phone.”
Some students feel the app is an unnecessary reiteration of information students already know.
Lower Wynter Tracey, who downloaded the app after receiving the email, thinks the app is “extra” and said, “I looked at some icons, but it was mostly stuff they had already told us.” Tracey said that since students do not find themselves in situations of crisis that often, the app is repetitive, seeing as students already know the overall procedures.
Brown agreed. “I also think the school does a good job of informing students of the procedures so most people on campus [already] have at least a general idea of what to do in emergency situations,” she said.
Upper Brian Bae and senior Julia Friberg, on the other hand, felt that the app will greatly improve the understanding of what to do in a crisis.
Bae said that if students didn’t know what to do, the school would have to hold drills for every possible situation in order to prepare. He thinks the app is a much easier-access guide to how to handle a crisis. “Since we usually have our phones with us, a single-touch access through the app seems to be so much better than maybe a publication or a section in the school website,” he said.
Friberg thinks it’s being underutilized on campus. “[Our lack of preparation] is very evident during our once a year evacuation drills when no one knows what to do in emergency,” she said. Friberg has witnessed situations during these drills when a student looks lost and confused until campus security guides them to the safety of their dorms. “It is ridiculous. We don’t actually know what to do on campus, and especially because we live in America where there’s a lot of guns, it’s legitimately important for student to know what to do.”
Campus Safety will still hold their annual drills as well as send out text alerts. Gravel said that although the drills have been running smoothly, he hopes students will do their part so the critique of each drill is accurate. “I can’t stress it enough that students really need to take it seriously,” he said. “Even if they get a notification that it is just a drill, they should be acting as though it is a real event. You’re going to do what you do in a drill in real life, so we want to get it as close as possible to the real thing.”