By Jaden Lux–On a crisp Iowa morning in the fall, the sun has just peaked through over the petite buildings across the street from the small, 68-acre campus known as Morningside College. At a time like this, peace can be felt with every step taken, but as many similar campuses across the country unfortunately know peace is not always the case.
Fifty-two school shootings have occurred in 2015 alone, and many are beginning to feel this sort of incident is not a matter of ‘if’ but a matter of ‘when’ it will strike home.
Is Morningside College prepared for a campus shooter?
Brett Lyon, director of safety and security at Morningside, feels that preparing ourselves for an incident like this is the best defense we have. “We prepare the entire faculty and staff, and are working to get more students to get the same training the faculty get,” Lyon reports and continues by saying, “Full time staff go through the ‘Save Yourself’ program with officer Chad Sheehan [Sioux City Police Department].”
Lyon believes it is crucial that students get this sort of training. “You’re not always with a faculty or staff member. This program isn’t just for school, it’s for life,” he said.
Dr. David Elder, a faculty member who underwent the program, was eager to give his input to what he’s picked up from ‘Save Yourself’ along with the research he’s done on his own.
“We’ve been taught to really make sure we know where the shooter is on campus. If the shooter isn’t near your classroom, get out,” said Elder.
Elder, an assistant professor of Writing and Rhetoric, sits in a small square office filled with literature of all kinds. He has taken a serious interest in the issue, and after doing some research, discussed a plan with his students if an incident were to happen.
They created a plan to meet at Immaculate Conception, a local Catholic church a block off of campus. “We don’t want it to happen on campus, but if it does, we want to be prepared.”
While leaders of Morningside may seem confident on the issue, students may have a different idea.
According to a poll conducted on SurveyMonkey for this story, over 60 percent of Morningside students who answered believed that the college was either slightly prepared or not prepared at all if an active shooter were to come on campus. This statistic is followed by an almost 70 percent agreement from survey takers that the college is not doing enough to educate students on what to do in the event of an attack.
Elder suggests a neutral stance: “I don’t think a campus is ever ready, I think the administration has done a good job training faculty, but no matter how trained you are you’re not ready for something like that.”
According to Lyon, the ‘Save Yourself’ program is being offered to students for free in an effort to make the campus as a whole more educated on the issue. To Lyon, concepts like breaking a window, barricading yourself in a room, being active are all good ideas to protect yourself.
“If that person comes in, you grab a chair and start swinging,” says Lyon. These ideas and many more are being taught in the program after many began to realize the old method of hiding from the shooter wasn’t effective.
Elder hits the whole idea of an active shooter on the head by saying, “I don’t think the size of the school matters, I think that if someone is going to do it, they won’t care the size of the school. It’s still always in the back of my mind.” His mind and millions more Americans that see these shootings reported daily on the media, but students don’t have to be constantly worrying.
According to the same survey, in general, over 70 percent of surveyed students feel ‘very safe’ on the quaint suburban campus.
“We have to take every situation seriously. We take every precaution to make sure we have a safe campus,” Lyon delivers with intensity. As students and community members, one can think to the slogan the New York City public transportation system uses when something fishy is happening. ‘If you see something, say something.’
Signs of aggression, depression, or suicide are all red flags for an attack. Lives could be saved by directing a distressed person to a professional that can give them the counseling they need.
Lyon agrees by saying, “Take an active role in your safety. Safety starts with you.”
Leave a Reply