The tragedy at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon has inspired talks of safety and reform around the nation. The tragedy took place Thursday, Oct. 1. A 26-year-old student shot and killed nine people — eight students and a professor — and injured nine others. The youngest victim was just 18 years old. The gunman died later on in a battle between the responding police officers by gunshot.
Los Medanos College is just one of many institutions solidifying their safety measures to ensure something so horrid won’t take place on our campus.
Thursday, Oct. 8, there was a nationwide remembrance, which LMC participated in. The National Moment of Silence, was organized by the Association of Community Colleges.
In a dark instance of coincidence, there was a campus safety meeting a few weeks prior to the incident at Umpqua. The meeting included faculty and students with the Police services staff including Lt. Huddleston as the lead in the discussion. He brought up a past instance that took place here at LMC that is truly frightening. A man had come to our school with the intention of shooting at the Childcare Center here on campus. Luckily someone reported the suspicious man’s behavior to the on campus police and he was detained.
The fact of the matter is overall campus safety needs to be taken more seriously here on campus. There are many measures and procedures that are in place to protect those at LMC at all times, but it’s important to take individual responsibility and know what to do just in case your safety is put in danger.
The first line of action to take if you suspect a mass shooting were to take place around you, is to be aware of your surroundings and get as far away from the vicinity as possible — run as fast and as far away as possible. If running isn’t an option, then the next thing to do is find a place to hide and lay low, out of the line of sight of the shooter. If that’s not possible, play dead. This strategy actually worked for one of the victims from the recent Oregon shooting; because of playing dead, she survived. The last option if you know absolutely that there is no way out is to attack the shooter. The main goal when attacking the shooter shouldn’t be to injure him or her, but to disarm them, then tackle them and wait for the police to arrive.
Of course, we don’t even want to think about the possibility of this kind of shooting happening on campus, but overall, campus security is and always will be the main priority of police services at this campus, but it takes a collective effort to stop crime overall. Crimes that can occur on college campus are most commonly theft, which includes items like phones, wallets and even cars. Unfortunately crimes also include assault and/or battery and sexual assault. Remember to be smart and be safe.
There are talks between the faculty and the student senate to have a town hall meeting on campus to inform all those on campus, especially students, about basic rules of safety and how we can all work together to secure our learning environment. Keep your eye out for any news around campus for safety information, also there is always police services, faculty, and the student senate available.