Michigan State University is settling claims with the three families of the students who were killed in the February campus mass shooting. The university board consented to this at a meeting Friday.
The families sued the university in June alleging that MSU was negligent of insufficient safety conditions before the shooting. The allegations included a lack of classroom doors that could be locked from the inside, a proper emergency alert system, public address speakers, an armed security officer, metal detectors or security stations, according to court documents obtained by WLNS.
“While no amount of compensation can ever replace the loss of life, we do hope this brings some closure, support and relief to those families,” MSU trustee Dan Kelly said. “The university gives its deepest condolences to each of the three families and we are committed to ensuring the memory of their child is not forgotten in this park in this Spartan community.”
Following the shooting, the university employed an outside audit of its response to the shooting. The audit recommended upgrades to the university surveillance system and more locks on classroom doors.
While some of these upgrades are being implemented, the university is not following some specific recommendations made by the audit including the specific type of lock to be installed and the installation of magnetic door holders that would be connected to a campus-wide lockdown system. That system would allow for all campus doors to be instantaneously closed and locked from a remote location.
The university has also walked back its original commitment to installing 1,300 new classroom door locks by the start of the fall semester to about 800. The deadline for finishing the project has been pushed back to the end of the 2023-2024 academic year.
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