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UT administrators focus on campus safety, look to improve communication |
| By
Jim Winkler |
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Nov 9, 2008
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| President Lloyd Jacobs encouraged faculty, staff and students to sign up for UT Alert. |
University safety and police officials will continue to work to improve emergency response procedures in the wake of a pair of incidents Oct. 31 and Nov. 2, UT President Lloyd Jacobs said at last Thursday’s town hall meeting on Main Campus.
In each incident, a stabbing on the Scott Park Campus and a report of a man with a handgun outside Dowd, White and Nash residence halls, UT Police secured the scene in minutes.
While applauding the UT Police Department’s quick response to the incidents and its determination that the assailants had left the campuses and did not pose an imminent threat, Jacobs acknowledged that human errors and technological glitches in the UT Alert system caused delays in notifying faculty, staff and students on the University’s campuses about the incidents. Those problems have been or are in the process of being corrected, the president said.
Jacobs, a retired vascular surgeon, said he asked for the review, likening it to time-honored hospital morbidity and mortality conferences where surgeons and physicians address problems and errors in patient cases in an educational setting to focus on improvements, not finding blame.
“A careful, retrospective, no finger-pointing, no-fault analysis of the University’s systems and processes for dealing with such instances is the single most powerful teaching tool that is available to us,” the president said.
In the Oct. 31 incident, police received information around 11:36 a.m. about a stabbing at Scott Park Campus.
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| UT Police Chief Jeff Newton talked about how officers respond to emergencies. |
An hour later, the UT Alert system kicked in to warn approximately 11,000 students, staff and faculty subscribers via cell phone text-message and e-mail alerts.
However, because of human error, many faculty, staff and students received three text messages or e-mails, overwhelming the capacity of the computer server, while some 1,500 people never got any messages because they had improperly entered e-mail or text-message information when they signed up for the system. That information was not migrated to a more robust computer server when the University switched its emergency messaging vendor earlier this year.
In addition, the first message sent out on the University’s outdoor public-address warning system was unintelligible because of a microphone malfunction in the police dispatch office. That problem has been solved.
To avoid delays in emergency notification in the future, some 20 police officers and administrators plan to send mock “alerts” via e-mails and text messages to each other in coming weeks to become more proficient with the system.
Police Chief Jeff Newton noted that the first steps in handling an emergency are always to gather facts, make decisions, write the message, and have the system cycle through the addresses of subscribers.
“Many times the first reports are inaccurate,” he said.
Police officers always have to assess potentially dangerous situations with the best information they have at the time they have it, the president stressed.
“Human judgments always have to be made in situations like this,” he said. “We cannot take away the ability of well-trained police officers to make judgments.”
Jacobs said the early warning and notification system is an important tool that allows the University to quickly respond during an emergency and keep students safe. Even before the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings that left 33 people dead, a system to notify students and staff of potential threats was in the works at UT.
Signing up for UT Alert is voluntary, and some 11,000 people have done so since it became available. Jacobs again encouraged faculty, staff and students to sign up for the system, which also will be useful in the event of bomb threats, fires, natural disasters like a tornado, or cancellations of classes.
He also urged faculty, staff and students to again educate themselves about safety, and encouraged them to show a safety video found on the myUT home page before meetings.
“Our campuses are safe,” the president underscored. “The number of these types of incidents is quite low. I am deeply committed to safety.”
Newton spoke at safety forums in three residence halls last Wednesday and stressed the importance of students locking room doors and of encouraging everyone to be the eyes and ears for each other.
Gary Jankowski, associate vice president for health and safety, said that he will begin working with the University's Health and Safety Committee chaired by Dr. Eric Findsen, associate professor of chemistry, to look for ways to improve security at Scott Park. The University, he added, has submitted a request for capital funds to install indoor public-address systems for Main Campus classroom buildings and residence halls.
Thursday's meeting was originally scheduled to be held on Health Science Campus, but it was moved to Main Campus because of the two incidents.
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