Another School Shooting. How Safe is Campus?
Confessed attacker Nikolas Cruz opened fire—using a legally-obtained semi-automatic AR-15 rifle—at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 14 students, three teachers and wounding many others.
Members of the Exeter community came together Monday evening in the wake of the tragedy at a vigil held by Rev. Heidi Heath in Phillips Church. In addition to mourning the tragedy, some teachers and students have expressed interest in taking action and are beginning to craft plans that would allow Exeter students to attend local marches on Mar. 24 and Apr. 20 to lobby Congress for gun-control legislation.
This incident was a wake-up call for schools across the country, including Exeter. As news of the Florida shooting spread, many Exeter parents directed their concerns to Director of Campus Safety Services and Risk Management Paul Gravel, who informed them of the Academy’s response protocol and cooperation with local law enforcement in maximizing campus security.
“We are a high school with a college campus,” Gravel said, summarizing the challenges that Campus Safety faces when designing response protocols for Exeter’s open campus. Safety officials have agreed, however, that if an emergency involving active shooters occurs, all buildings with card access will be immediately locked down, and notifications will be sent out across campus using Exeter Alert, texts, emails and loud speakers. Campus Safety would then try to locate the exact threat so responding law enforcement could be sent directly to the location.
“I just know I have to hide. I do know what ALICE is, and I’m not sure if we’re actually going to follow that when the time comes.”
Gravel emphasized the importance of student awareness of the Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate (ALICE) Protocol, which prevents students from panicking in emergency situations.
Drills are administered on a yearly basis. According to Gravel, Exonians have improved their lockdown conduct over the years. He recalled that when he first came to Exeter in 2014, students were walking around and letting people into buildings during lockdown drills. However, Campus Safety still collaborates with the Dean of Faculty to ensure that all instructors are well-trained to answer questions about emergency response protocols and that they take drills seriously, even in situations where students are taking tests.
Due to scheduling conflicts, Gravel was unable to hold an assembly about ALICE this year. Prep Alexis Ramon is uncertain of the Academy’s policy on crisis reaction. “I don’t know what [ALICE] entails. To my knowledge, we’re supposed to just try and avoid whoever is on campus,” Ramon said. “I know that there are drills sometimes, but I’m not exactly sure what needs to be done when the alarms go off.”
Along with Campus Safety officers, Exeter has five Institutional Risk Management groups, two of which are concerned with students’ physical safety.
Dean of Students Melissa Mischke emphasized the administration’s connection with professional law enforcers. “Our phones all have 911 tags, meaning if I call using this phone, the police will know exactly where I am on campus, which building, which floor and which room,” she said. Additionally, Campus Safety employs patrol vehicles and radio dispatches to connect with the Exeter Police Department (EPD) in cases of emergency.
This past summer, Gravel directed two large-scale drills for more than 100 law enforcement officers, alongside Captain Michael Munck of the Exeter Police Department. The drills, which took place in the Academy Building and Love Gym, also engaged the Seacoast Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team and the local fire department. “We had active shooter training so that they would be familiarized and comfortable with driving through campus and operating in the buildings,” Gravel said. Regarding the possibility of future drills, Gravel added that he will “open [the campus] up to them whenever they want to come and change the buildings where the drills happen to switch it up.”
Parents as well as students, however, have raised questions about why Exeter’s Campus Safety cannot be an armed unit itself, given that this is a precaution many college campuses have taken. Though the trustees and the Institutional Risk Management group have held discussions about this option, Gravel doubts it will happen. “The risk of having campus safety carry firearms around campus is greater than the risk of waiting for law enforcement to come,” he said. “I would probably lose half of my crew because they don’t want to carry guns. Not all of them have experience in the police force.”
Gravel highlighted that with recent initiatives to further engage police officers, Exeter could reliably count on their appearance two to three minutes after the start of a crisis on campus. In addition, floor plans have been distributed for major Academy buildings to the EPD and Fire Department to minimize the delay between orientation and response during a possible hostage situation.
Campus Safety is also in close communication with the Fusion Center in Concord, which updates information from “federal and state agencies including the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the DEA,” according to Gravel. The center sends out terrorist alerts and information regarding threats directed at higher education institutions and campuses.
Gravel noted that the possibility of surveillance cameras being placed inside buildings has been discussed within the administration and the Dean’s Council, but ultimately, these efforts failed to pass due to concerns for student independence and personal privacy. Gravel said there is “no big brother watching here.”
Some discussions have addressed concerns about converting campus into constant lockdown mode, in which students would need Lion Cards to access academic buildings at all times. Given the current campus culture, Gravel does not think that this is the solution. “We want students to have the freedom of roaming around campus,” he said. Gravel emphasized, however, that it is possible to electronically give or deny access to any card in cases of emergency.
Campus Safety has also encountered the difficulty of accounting for all members of the Academy during an emergency situation. Gravel explained that numerous messages had to be delivered during an emergency response, noting that such inefficient systems are common among other preparatory schools. “To find out the number of students, we have to make four calls: the Dean of Students, the health center, the children’s center and of course the students in class. It’s an antiquated system, but a lot of prep schools are struggling with that [same problem],” he said. To solve this problem, the Dean of Students is currently considering an app that enables students to voluntarily tell Campus Safety where they are in case of a lockdown.
Even with these response methods in place, senior Sophia Zu feels that students’ obliviousness to these systems and the confusion surrounding the ALICE procedure leaves Exeter unprepared. “I don’t remember a time when we have had a lockdown drill and teachers have canceled class activities,” she said. “Exonians consider themselves removed from the prospect [of] an actual shooting. The way students are being trained is virtually nonexistent. The drills are not being taken very seriously.”
Illustrative of Zu’s concerns, senior Wyatt Foster admitted to having limited knowledge of lockdown drill procedures. “I honestly don’t remember the last test,” he said. “I just know I have to hide. I do know what ALICE is, and I’m not sure if we’re actually going to follow that when the time comes.”
Even if students adhere to these preventative measures, Gravel cannot guarantee Exonians’ safety. “If there’s a shooter, there are going to be casualties, there’s no way to stop that,” he said. Gravel added that he has concerns about the need to “minimize target-rich areas” like the Assembly Hall. “It keeps me awake at night.”