Elon campus response to Virginia Tech tragedy

President Leo M. Lambert asked students, faculty and staff at the weekly College Coffee gathering to join with him for a moment of silence for those affected by the incident.

At 4:15 p.m. today, Chaplain Richard McBride will lead a “Service of Prayer for the Virginia Tech Community” at the Elon Community Church. Those attending the service will have an opportunity to write messages or bring items to be taken to the Virginia Tech campus on Friday. During the lunch hour Wednesday, there will be a community gathering at the Elon University School of Law in Greensboro.

The tragedy has touched the Elon community in several ways. Some Elon students, faculty and staff have relatives or close friends at Virginia Tech, and some of those people were among the injured and killed. Two Elon students who are enrolled in the dual-degree engineering program at the school were not injured.

Currently, students, faculty and staff affected by the Virginia Tech massacre are being contacted. Counselors, student life professionals and members of the Chaplain’s office are meeting with students. Training and support are being offered to help faculty address these issues.

Several parents have inquired about Elon’s emergency planning, and the steps that would be taken if such an event occurred on our campus. President Lambert called together his senior staff today and asked that details of the emergency preparations be reviewed with the community.

While it is impossible to prepare for every emergency, Elon has a comprehensive emergency response plan that was developed using federal response guidelines and integrates local (community and campus) resources. We review the plan and provide training each year to staff and student leaders, running simulated disasters periodically to keep abreast of any developments which may enhance our responses. For example, this year Elon added a flu pandemic plan for the campus. The university will review the Virginia Tech incident and update its emergency plan if necessary. 

We have many advantages that would enable us to respond effectively to a crisis of this nature. They include the following:

• A 24-hour North Carolina state-certified Campus Police force, which is trained in rapid response protocols and conducts patrols throughout the campus around the clock. Our Campus Police personnel have fully linked communication channels with local law enforcement agencies and have excellent working relationships and mutual aid agreements with police in the Town of Elon, the City of Burlington and the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office.
• A well-defined lock-down protocol by which all campus buildings can be quickly secured.
• An experienced disaster response team that includes senior administrators who have many years of service at Elon and fully understand the university and local community culture and infrastructure.
• An excellent health services staff including a full-time physician, nurse practitioners and other health care professionals, who are housed in the R.N. Ellington Health and Counseling Center on campus.An excellent and experienced 24-hour counseling and student life staff, who have done an outstanding job responding to students who are experiencing anxiety or having trouble dealing with this tragedy.
• An excellent communications system that includes a well-developed and highly-utilized campus Web information system (E-Net), campus broadcast e-mail system, recorded emergency telephone hotlines, well-defined telephone trees, the campus radio station (WSOE) and closed-circuit television marquee system.  Campus Police officers have sophisticated equipment to announce an emergency via loudspeakers in their squad cars, a protocol for building-to-building alerts, building alarms and/or building coordinators that allow for quick evacuations. Emergency “blue light” telephones are also positioned throughout campus, and most campus buildings are equipped with card access security systems tied to the campus computer network.

Elon University students, faculty and staff have a long history of caring for one another and responding to crisis with compassion and outreach. All value Elon’s safe campus environment and serve as partners with Campus Safety and Police in protecting our community against threats, both external and internal. The relatively small size of the campus and the close proximity of our facilities provide for greater security and easier communication in the event of a crisis. Our strong sense of community provides support for its members in times of crises.