The crowd was small and the subject serious at the Campus Safety Forum held Monday in the University Commons Auditorium.
"As we approach the one-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech shooting, many of us realize that campus safety is still very important," said Tammy McGuckin, associate vice president for student affairs.
"Unfortunately, many other campuses have had to deal with student deaths. It is still very much an issue that affects all of us."
UWF officials convened the forum to discuss a variety of programs aimed at protecting the safety of students, faculty and staff during an emergency on campus. About 50 people attended the event.
Sirens are located behind Building 36, Building 52, the Health, Leisure and Sports Facility and the baseball field. The main purpose of this system is to alert people who are outside to find shelter as soon as possible in the case of an emergency. The campus police make the decision on when to sound the alarm.
The University also sends out mass e-mails to students, faculty and staff to warn them of any present danger that could affect the campus.
Other outlets UWF uses to notify people on campus of safety issues include telephone messaging to all campus phones; alerts by NOAA weather phones; the electronic entrance sign; WUWF 88.1 FM radio; and Cox Cable channel 4.
The University is working on more services to inform students immediately of pressing safety breaches.
"One of the things that is most important in regards to when you've got an emergency situation is communication," said Peter Robinson, director for environmental health and safety. "We've got to be able to communicate what's going on and what the issue is. The University has a number of mechanisms that we use to communicate information to you."
These mechanisms will include Argo Alert, to be released in April.
"Next month we are adding instant and text messaging through a system called Argo Alert," said Mike F. Dieckmann, senior associate vice president for University affairs. Faculty, staff and students will need to subscribe to Argo Alert to get these messages."
Students can subscribe to this service when it becomes available and also take a look at campus policies and procedures at http://www.uwfemergency.org.
There are many issues that could easily escalate into an emergency situation for UWF -- the most feared being someone wielding a gun on campus.
"If we have an active shooter on campus, we must all act immediately," said John Warren, UWF police chief. "In the last 40 years, there have been approximately 18 school shootings in the nation. The odds are about equal to a lightning strike that any of us would be in the same building as an active shooter."
Warren went on to describe the differences between active shooters and other types of violent criminals.
"An active shooter situation is very different from other crimes," he said. "The active shooter is a mass murderer who wants to kill as many people as he can ... his goal is not to escape … all he wants to do is kill people. The first officers who respond on the scene enter the building with the mindset to take out the active shooter."
Other speakers detailed the problem of trying to identify dangerous people on campus before they act. Though the chances of this happening are slim, UWF is aware that an active shooter situation is always a possibility. Organizations like the Critical Case Team have been formed to get help to troubled individuals before anything happens.
"The FBI and Secret Service concluded that there is no effective way to determine who will be a shooter, or who will be dangerous at all," said Jim R. Hurd, associate vice president for student affairs. "The real goal is prevention."
He said campus counselors and police, along with other members of the staff, are a part of the team designed to survey the student body for threats.
This aim of this team is not to profile students but to focus on students who show signs of needing some sort of guidance, he said.
President John Cavanaugh ended the forum by inviting faculty, staff and students to explore UWF safety programs and procedures.
"I want to emphasize that we take campus safety very seriously here," Cavanaugh said. "We're very concerned with the safety of people on campus."
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