{"id":7456,"date":"2015-11-17T21:57:09","date_gmt":"2015-11-18T02:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/?p=7456"},"modified":"2015-11-17T22:03:44","modified_gmt":"2015-11-18T03:03:44","slug":"campus-safety-preparing-for-the-worst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/archives\/7456","title":{"rendered":"Campus safety: Preparing for the worst"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Hide\"By Jaden Lux–<\/strong>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.<\/p>\n

Fifty-two school shootings have occurred in 2015 alone, and many are beginning to feel this sort of incident is not a matter of \u2018if\u2019 but a matter of \u2018when\u2019 it will strike home.<\/p>\n

Is Morningside College prepared for a campus shooter?<\/p>\n

Brett Lyon, director of safety and security at Morningside, feels that preparing ourselves for an incident like this is the best defense we have. \u201cWe prepare the entire faculty and staff, and are working to get more students to get the same training the faculty get,\u201d Lyon reports and continues by saying, \u201cFull time staff go through the \u2018Save Yourself\u2019 program with officer Chad Sheehan [Sioux City Police Department].\u201d<\/p>\n

Lyon believes it is crucial that students get this sort of training. \u201cYou\u2019re not always with a faculty or staff member. This program isn\u2019t just for school, it\u2019s for life,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Dr. David Elder, a faculty member who underwent the program, was eager to give his input to what he\u2019s picked up from \u2018Save Yourself\u2019 along with the research he\u2019s done on his own.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been taught to really make sure we know where the shooter is on campus. If the shooter isn\u2019t near your classroom, get out,\u201d said Elder.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

They created a plan to meet at Immaculate Conception, a local Catholic church a block off of campus. \u201cWe don\u2019t want it to happen on campus, but if it does, we want to be prepared.\u201d<\/p>\n

While leaders of Morningside may seem confident on the issue, students may have a different idea.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Elder suggests\u00a0a neutral stance: \u00a0\u201cI don\u2019t 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\u2019re not ready for something like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Lyon, the \u2018Save Yourself\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that person comes in, you grab a chair and start swinging,\u201d 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\u2019t effective.<\/p>\n

Elder hits the whole idea of an active shooter on the head by saying, \u201cI don\u2019t think the size of the school matters, I think that if someone is going to do it, they won\u2019t care the size of the school. It\u2019s still always in the back of my mind.\u201d His mind and millions more Americans that see these shootings reported daily on the media, but students don\u2019t have to be constantly worrying.<\/p>\n

According to the same survey, in general, over 70 percent of surveyed students feel \u2018very safe\u2019 on the quaint suburban campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to take every situation seriously. We take every precaution to make sure we have a safe campus,\u201d 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. \u2018If you see something, say something.\u2019<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Lyon agrees by saying, \u201cTake an active role in your safety. Safety starts with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[203],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7456"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7473,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7456\/revisions\/7473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}