By Abigail Allen
Staff Writer
Trevecca’s faculty and administration participated in active shooter training over the summer in response to the reality of mass shooting incidents.
Roughly 500 mass shootings have occurred so far in 2022, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The archive also reported that the number of mass shooting incidents in the U.S. has increased by 46 percent from 2019 to 2020.
Lena Hegi Welch, dean of the school of arts and social sciences, was among those who participated in the training.
“They took us into different classrooms on campus and talked about how a teacher in each classroom could protect students,” said Welch. “It heightened my awareness of what to do if I were on campus with an active shooter.”
The training was designed to support schools and universities in emergency management. The class overviewed the run, hide, fight protocol in particular.
“It’s pretty basic. If there’s a situation where you’re able to run away, run away. If you can’t run away, hide. And if you find yourself face to face with a threat, then you want to fight,” said Gregory Dawson, university security captain and director of emergency management.
Along with recent faculty training, administrators are also ready to use multi-channel methods in emergency situations to communicate with those within the organization and others off campus.
Mollie Yoder, associate vice president of marketing and communications, is a member of the Emergency Response Preparedness Committee on campus and works with campus security to assess and respond to potential risks.
“Students can opt-in to our emergency alert system,” said Yoder. “They can expect mass messages via text, email and other media channels in case of emergency.”
Dawson said that the campus community doing everything they can to be prepared for an emergency event is the best thing they can do.
“Failure to prepare is preparing to fail,” said Dawson.
