The Collegiate surveyed Grand Rapids Community College students about campus safety on Tuesday, Sept. 19, and made a concerning discovery. Most students have never seen GRCC’s active shooter response video.
This video was created by the GRCC Police to inform students and staff about what to do in an emergency. Despite being four years old, the video has only around 1,500 views compared to the 12,157 students enrolled for the 2023 Fall semester.
This begs the question, who is responsible for educating students about what to do in case of a campus emergency?
The administration has stated they can’t require any professor to show the video but have strongly encouraged them to do so. GRCC President Charles Lepper even indicated that it doesn’t have to be at the beginning of the semester.
“I would just encourage our faculty to take five minutes and maybe sometime throughout the semester, (it) doesn’t necessarily have to be (in) these first few weeks,” Lepper said.
Does this approach actually keep students safe?
After the 1999 Columbine High School shooting shocked Americans across the country, public schools have implemented active shooter lockdown drills along with their fire, tornado, and earthquake procedures.
That was 23 years ago, and with over 50% of the students at GRCC under the age of 24, many students have spent their entire educational career practicing turning off the lights, locking the doors, and sitting in the dark corners of their classrooms.
There are 14 sworn law enforcement officers with full arrest powers working for the GRCC Police Department where officers have undergone training to prepare for the worst. GRCC currently has two videos: the fire drill video and the active shooter response video.
GRCC Police have encouraged students to follow three guidelines in an active shooter emergency: run, hide, fight. This is the safety plan outlined in the video that features several GRCC police officers. But what good is a safety plan if no one knows about it? A lot of valuable safety information – while only a few clicks away on the GRCC website – is not getting to the students who need to see it.
When speaking to students on campus, many stated they wished professors would show the active shooter response video in class. And since the college can’t require this, several students suggested the best approach would be to have the video emailed to them directly.
The Collegiate agrees.
The administration should send the active shooter response and other safety videos to students directly. This will allow more direct access to the videos without having to search the web for them or hope that professors play them in class. This also allows students to choose whether or not they want to watch the videos.
GRCC’s active shooter response training video could be incorporated into the process of enrolling for class to make sure all students get access to important safety information. Making sure students have easy access to all safety and security information should be the number one priority for GRCC administrators.
