“When you see something, you need to say something right away,” Simon said at Tuesday’s University Council meeting.
She said she has written to the individual who made the call and is glad the individual informed police officials of what he or she saw.
From the initial call to police and from the text message alert, it took only nine minutes to respond and secure the situation, Simon said.
She also said the university will continue to work on improving technology, but there is no way the system will be perfect.
Simon said the university is doing all they can to keep people informed as soon as possible, but the only way to get information out more quickly is to keep text message alerts short.
It is more important to have information out as soon as possible, even if it is “sparse” and “incomplete,” Simon said. She also said that it was important to implement more and better ways of educating faculty on how to handle this type of crisis.
“Unfortunately, though there have been 10 programs offered to date for faculty, only 200 folks have showed up during this time,” Simon said.
Simon asked faculty members to put trust and patience into the university to inform them of dangerous situations.
Acting Provost June Youatt said she will be encouraging college deans to bring up workshops and materials for faculty members to review procedures in case of emergencies.
“I think it’s time that we devote some time to better preparing ourselves,” Youatt said.
Youatt said it was better to be informed of emergency procedures and never have to use them rather than be uninformed and stuck in a crisis.
