Campuses incorporate emergency alerts

Just more than a year ago, college and university campuses were jolted when a gunman took the lives of five of his peers at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. A year prior, five faculty members and 27 students lost their lives and 23 were wounded at the hand of a fellow student at Virginia Tech.

The jolts caused schools everywhere to begin tightening security, doing whatever they could do to prepare for such a tragedy. If only they could see it coming.

In the months following the deadly shootings, campus police departments in Utah took a hard look at security holes and made revisions to policies and procedures, testing them along the way, to keep students as safe as possible. The process continues to evolve, and schools still tweak security plans, keeping up-to-date on the latest practices, but also staying on top of their game and ready "if, heaven forbid, something of that magnitude should happen," said Weber State University spokesman John Kowalewski.

"There's always ongoing training, but we have to hope it never happens on our campus," he said.

After assessing the actions of emergency response teams at prior campus shootings, experts found that communication was one of the areas demanding improvement.

Like many campuses nationwide and in Utah, Weber State rolled out a new emergency notification system this year.

Code Purple has already been successful in alerting students, faculty and staff of a campus closure due to a heavy snowfall. The system asks students to voluntarily submit phone numbers and e-mail addresses where they can be contacted in an emergency, and it also has been used during tests and drills.

Earlier this year, the university staged an incident with a gunman. The emergency system was used to notify students, faculty and staff that the multi-hostage situation wasn't real.

"It allowed our campus police department and the local police departments to coordinate on what they would do in the event it was a real situation," Kowalewski said.

In 1993, Weber State experienced a real situation in which a gunman opened fire with a .22-caliber revolver during an administrative hearing in the Shepherd Union Building. A campus police officer, a Weber State attorney and a student were injured in the gunfire. The officer managed to shoot and kill the gunman, Mark Duong. The hearing was held to discuss a harassment complaint students had filed against Duong.