Oh, they've got to be kidding. Just go this email about the policy for what to do in an active shooter situation:
The 5 Outs: Surviving an Active Shooter Program include the following steps to protect yourself if an active shooter is in your vicinity:
GET OUT of the area to somewhere safe. Leave the room and go in the opposite direction from any shooter.
CALL OUT to 911. Give as many details about what you saw or heard and your current location. Do not assume that someone else has called – you may have new information for the police.
HIDE OUT. If you cannot leave, turn out the lights of the room you are in, and hide until help arrives. Avoid hallways, turn your cell phone on silent, and remain as quiet as possible.
KEEP OUT. Lock, block, or barricade the door with any available furniture.
TAKE OUT. This is a last resort when you have no other option, this is the life or death situation. Attempt to take out the shooter however you can.
This is not helpful.
Oh, and they reminded us that, in the event of an emergency, we'll all get a text message.
I was really hoping that last one would be "defuse the situation by ordering the shooter a pizza".
I'm so glad that you now know not to run towards the shooter.
This is not helpful.
In the freaking slightest.
I'm really not sure how to even react to that.
Well, they found and arrested the person who made the threat. Yik Yak isn't as anonymous as the person thought, once the police get involved. They found no weapons in his apartment, and he said it was a prank.
That is a relief. Now to deal with the unhelpful policies....
HAS there ever been a campus shooter who gave a helpful warning ahead of time?
Not that it isn't fucking scary. Or that they couldn't. But it seems atypical enough that you could have included that in the warnings if only to try and mitigate panic.
This is odd. The head of the department sends out an email to all of us each Monday morning. The one today started with the stuff about the shooting threat, and then the next item was a reminder that this department has zero tolerance for misogyny, and that includes jokes about female mathematicians. I wonder what prompted that. (There was an incident about a year ago, where somebody wrote some lengthy diatribe about how all the bitches are ruining mathematics on one of the chalkboards in a department conference room, but I haven't heard about anything happening recently.)
