Planning for the Unthinkable

By Michael von Glahn

This article was originally published in the December 2015 issue of CS Extra, a digital supplement to The College Store magazine. Note that some interviewees may no longer be with the same institution or store, however, the list of online resources has been updated.

Oct. 1, 2015, a sunny fall Thursday at Umpqua Community College, Roseburg, OR, started as just another day for staffers of the UCC Bookstore and a handful of customers making purchases.

Then, a little after 10:30 a.m., associate English professor Amy Fair and her students burst into the store, some screaming that a gunman was shooting people in Snyder Hall, just across the green. Fair’s class had heard the shots in the classroom next to theirs.

Store staffers, who’d taken campus active-shooter training in September 2014 and had just reviewed the plans and protocols the week before, instantly launched into their drilled response. They turned off the lights, locked the store down, and shepherded everyone into the receiving room at the back, the designated safe room. The large space has more than one way out, and holds tables and a refrigerator that could be used to block doors or flipped on their sides to act as barriers. Once secured inside, several people called 911.

“My training and knowledge kicked in immediately,” says Brian Paillette, bookstore specialist, receiving. “Students needed to be safe, first thing, then lock down the building.”

“Everyone did what was expected,” agrees Manager Micque Shoemaker, who’d just joined the store staff in July. “Communication began immediately. The bookstore staff locked the store down, guided others to the predesignated wait area, comforted those who were distraught, and kept everyone quiet until the all-clear.”

“I think the fact that we had a plan in place gave the employees confidence that they knew what to do and how to handle the situation,” says Jasmine Allen, bookstore specialist lead/textbooks. “I think students and staff who took refuge here felt safe because we had a plan and knew how to do it. As traumatic as this experience has been, if the bookstore had not had a plan the trauma would have been much worse.”

The trauma for the small campus was horrific enough. In a 10-minute shooting spree, the gunman—a 26-year-old student who’d bought textbooks in the store only two days before—killed an assistant professor and eight students in his introductory composition course and wounded nine others. After being wounded by responding police officers, he committed suicide.

While checking out two days before, the shooter had asked Shoemaker when the store was busiest, not the usual customer question about when lines were shortest. In hindsight, that suggests he might have been sizing up the store as a possible setting for his planned rampage.

Shoemaker had attended training in Bend, OR, the year before that included active-shooter response. “I came away from that with the understanding that every school should have a plan in place and that we should be prepared. It’s not a matter of if—it’s a matter of when,” she says.

Unfortunately, there is no information indicating how many college and university campuses have active-shooter response plans in place.

“It would be wonderful if such data was available,” says Bill Taylor, president of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators and chief of police for San Jacinto College, Pasadena, TX.

In October 2014, a Campus Marketplace poll asked readers if their college store had an emergency management plan in the event of a crisis on campus. While 46% of respondents said yes and 18% indicated they were working on one, 36% said they had no plan.

Workplace Violence Takes Many Forms

Colleges and universities are an unfamiliar new environment for many students, who face new stresses and pressures, in many cases with less family contact or involvement than they’re used to. As a workplace employing hundreds or even thousands of people, personal conflicts, disciplinary actions, or terminations can create friction. Add in the family issues or legal or financial difficulties that can occur anywhere, and you have a Petri dish for potential violence.

Candy Stoll’s CAMEX Flash Session, Workplace Violence—Predict and Prevent, was one of the top-rated educational sessions of the 2015 conference. The senior manager, asset protection, for Follett Higher Education Group says one of the first steps is to understand what actually constitutes workplace violence.

“Most workplace violence is not that tip-of-the-iceberg horrific event,” she explains. “It starts small and very insidiously.”

While workplace violence can grow and evolve into a headline tragedy, she adds that “the vast majority of it is stuff that’s innocuous, that you wouldn’t realize is workplace violence. That’s where the big opportunity is: If you learn the warning signs, you can catch it early, before it becomes the next horrific massacre.”

Stoll suggests viewing workplace violence as a triangle, with the apex being the April 2007 Virginia Tech shootings, in which a student gunman killed 32 and wounded 17 before committing suicide. “If Virginia Tech is the tip of that triangle and I make that red, the vast majority of workplace violence is at the base of the triangle, which is green, and that’s bullying, verbal abuse, harassment—that’s the stuff that most people never think of, but that’s where the bulk of it is,” she says. “If some intervention doesn’t occur over time it could escalate to that tip of the triangle.”

Stoll classifies any workplace behavior that makes you feel uncomfortable or uneasy as falling onto the violence spectrum.

“If you hear someone screaming at someone, that’s workplace violence,” she says. “Someone in lunchroom saying, ‘I am so frustrated! I just don’t know what to do! I’m going to go postal! I’m going to lose it!’—that’s workplace violence. People don’t realize that those are all forms of it because it doesn’t get the attention that the big event with the weapon gets.

“Whether it’s in written form or whether it’s said verbally or whether it’s some kind of physical action against you, it really is in the eyes of the beholder. If I’m feeling threatened, frightened, intimidated, it’s defined as workplace violence.”

The perpetrator can be a co-worker, a customer, a family member, a former friend, or even a stranger who for whatever reason is in your workspace. More than 20% of campus shooters between 1990-2008 were classified as “other”—often dismissed staffers or former students who returned to campus to commit their acts.

The good news is that almost all workplace violence is preventable and treatable, as long as you pay attention and have appropriate control measures in place for intervention.

Know the Warning Signs

Even if something seems innocent, Stoll says it’s best to err on the side of caution, especially if the language or attitude becomes habitual.

“Humor is the most acceptable form of aggression,” she explains. “When people tell you something, you need to believe exactly what they’re telling you.” Jokes and exaggerated language—“I just want to throttle him!” “She makes me want to go berserk!”—are usually harmless venting, but they can also indicate serious frustration or anger that requires some sort of intervention.

“Everybody has a bad day,” Stoll acknowledges, “but what we’re talking about are patterns of behavior. When that kind of verbiage and the kind of behavior that goes with that becomes their new pattern of behavior, that’s the problem.”

She recounts how at one store, a creative individual amused co-workers by drawing cartoons about them, which was fine until he penned one showing a particular person being decapitated.

“People said, ‘Oh that’s innocuous enough, that’s innocent. It’s just a cute little cartoon.’ What’s the message when you see in the backroom of your workplace a cartoon that shows your head being snapped off? That doesn’t exactly feel so innocuous,” Stoll points out. “If you allow that to continue, what’s the message?”

She adds that there were plenty of warning signs regarding the Virginia Tech shooter, whose odd behavior and morbid, violent writings had alarmed classmates and instructors alike.

“Think of it as a continuum,” Stoll suggests. “It starts small, with the verbal, and if there’s no intervention it will continue to escalate over time and frequency and intensity, to a point where without any intervention the person will get to the point where they will act … to endanger the safety of others.”

Watch for changes in personality or performance, disciplinary problems (absenteeism, chronic lateness), depression, or any sort of odd, repetitive, or bizarre behavior. Social media also provides new platforms for people with issues to display inappropriate behavior.

If you’re concerned, start a conversation with your supervisor, human resources, and the campus police. Find out if your campus has a dedicated threat-assessment team to evaluate situations.

When Stoll asked the audience members at her Flash Session what sort of response plan they had in place on their campuses, some indicated they knew to call campus security or the police if a violent incident arose, but were less clear about who to contact if they were worried by behavior that made them uncomfortable and the violence was only potential.

“That seemed to be a disconnect for a lot of the participants,” Stoll says. “I’m so amazed at the number of people that don’t know what to do. They don’t know that there’s a resource to help them, so they just tolerate the behavior.”

Unless there’s a defined plan on campus, people also don’t know how to respond if a shooting actually occurs.

In a fire drill, the sort of emergency training with which everyone is most familiar, you typically exit the building to head for a designated gathering point for a headcount. In an active-shooter situation, that might simply give the perpetrator a concentration of targets. In a violent incident, you need to evaluate where the source of danger is and continue moving away from it as best you can.

“We had to teach people how to think,” Stoll says. “If we assume that people have common sense, well, there’s no such thing as common sense, which is why you have to educate.”

Train for ‘Muscle Memory’

At the University Bookstore, Wichita State University, Wichita, KS, Director Andi Stipp has some advantages over the majority of college store managers when it comes to emergency planning, as she’s a certified paramedic and her husband works in law enforcement. Stipp based her store’s active-shooter plan on handouts and training she received from the university, supplemented by insights from discussions with her husband.

Things are complicated by the fact her store is on three floors—sub-basement warehouse, retail floor, and textbook level—with nothing other than telephones for communicating from floor to floor. There is a public-address system, but Stipp says it’s “not the easiest thing to get to during a situation like this.”

Students can receive alerts on their cellphones via the campus text-messaging system. Shocker Alert System notifications—named for Shocker, the school’s mascot—also appear on every building’s digital clocks, but Stipp points out that while there is such a clock on her store’s textbook level and another down a hallway, there’s no clock on the main retail floor.

One hour of active-shooter training is required for campus staff, but only as time permits, so not everyone on her team of 13 full-timers has been able to take it yet. The training is offered once during the summer and again in December—“Right in the middle of buyback,” Stipp notes.

The program starts with the basics, such as identifying the sound of gunfire. “Would you be able to identify the sound of gunshots if you heard them? Are you able to distinguish a balloon popping from a gunshot?” Stipp asks. At Umpqua, news reports indicate students in Fair’s class thought the first shots were someone rapping a yardstick against a chalkboard in the next room.

The training walks participants through events on other campuses, such as Columbine High School and Virginia Tech, and details what sort of behavior to look for from someone who may be planning an attack. Stipp modified the campuswide program’s recommendations for a store setting.

“We have holdup alarms at our cash registers,” she explains, “so as soon as you identify the sound of gunfire, hit your holdup alarm.” That instantly alerts the police department on campus to a situation without having to go through 911.

Stipp says the most important part of her training is walking all full-time staffers through the entire store, even areas where they don’t normally work. “Should you be on this level and there’s an active shooter, where would you seek shelter, where would you go, where would you escape, what can you do to create a barrier between you and the threat?”

Many on her staff didn’t know where certain doorways went, the location of every fire door, or the existence of a back hallway. “It was kind of an eye-opening experience of how familiar are you with your surroundings?” Stipp says.

She revisits the plan with them several times a year for reinforcement, noting any changes in layout that affect evacuation patterns or new staffers who need to be brought up to speed. Repetition is key. “If you’re in a situation like this and in high stress, you’re going to fall back on that muscle memory,” she says.

In the Aftermath

An incident may be over in 10 minutes, but its repercussions will linger for months, years, or lifetimes.

After a traumatic event on campus, Shoemaker’s advice is simple: “Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. Text one another. Call. Meet. Keep the lines of communication open.”

Make sure everyone is aware of short- and long-term mental health services on and off campus, as well as any options for referrals for more long-term counseling if needed. Responses may range from a flood of emotions to no emotion at all.

“Aftermath is so tricky because everyone’s needs are so different,” says Allen. “We communicated with each other a lot in the days following the incident. … It is really an ongoing process and everyone is at a different stage in healing. Be prepared for a lot of emotions, from yourself and others, and be ready to be sensitive and supportive to co-workers and students who are not on the same path as you.”

“Explain to your employees that no reaction is the wrong one,” Shoemaker says. “Some may cry, some may not. There will be anger, there will be fear. … But what do you do with that emotion? You have a choice. You can let the experience and the emotions make you stronger and more resilient or you can let them break you.”

She strongly recommends staying off social media, which will be “overwhelming” and make you feel “bombarded and vulnerable.”

Be prepared for a media frenzy. Some reports will be accurate and others will be wildly off base. Some journalists will be respectful and sensitive, but many will not.

“I was driving a college van for two days after Oct. 1 and I was followed, cornered, yelled at for an interview,” says Shoemaker. “It was horrendous.”

With the campus suddenly thrust into the national media spotlight, the first week back was “insane.”

“It’s the only word that describes it,” Shoemaker says. “The store was filled with people wanting shirts and merchandise. I didn’t spend the weekend placing orders or putting together artwork, so I had to work fast. It’s tough when you’re trying to come back and just deal with your emotions and those around you, but you have a business to run and customers to serve.”

Before her staff returned, she went in over the weekend to clear away reminders of the day of the shooting. She closed out tills, cleaned off counters, threw away food that had spoiled, and tried to make the store look like it does every other day. Instead of the usual split schedules for staff, she had everyone come in together for the first week.

“We arrived as one unit and we left as one,” she says. “Unity meant a lot.”

Administrators may need reminding that the college store is a student-facing arm of the school, too.

“Leadership was working with faculty, student services, and financial aid to coach them on how to help students as they returned to campus: what to say, what not to say, how to deal with people breaking down or showing an array of other emotions. Bookstore staff need to have this training as well,” says Shoemaker. “We have employees, students, faculty, community members in and out of the store throughout the day. We dealt with breakdowns, people needing to talk, anger, all sorts of emotions, and it was trying for a staff who were trying to deal with their own.”

“There were many questions and rumors flying around in the days after the shooting and sometimes it was difficult to find out information,” Allen notes. “For example, when plans were being made to pick up vehicles left on campus, our store manager got one piece of information, but the press conference said something else.”

She adds that you shouldn’t rely on campus email, radio, or television to communicate your messages. “We had difficulty accessing campus email, and for employees like myself who do not have television or radio reception at our homes, it was easy to feel left in the dark.”

Next Steps

In the end, Shoemaker says her store’s plan is a good one that worked when put to the test. However, she’s going to tweak it by adding a first-aid kit, bottled water, and blankets to the safe room.

“There could have been someone come in who was injured or in shock,” she notes. “Having those items handy so that you are not at a greater risk by leaving the room is imperative. I would also consider having a box of snacks as well. Depending on the situation, you could be there for some time before getting an all-clear to leave.”

Such items would also be helpful in the event of a weather event, earthquake, or other natural disaster.

In Wichita, Stipp is researching door sleeves that can be placed over the hinges on the doors to her shelter-in-place locations to create an additional barrier to entry for a perpetrator. The units are expensive, but Stipp notes that when the potential trade-off is one or more lives, you look for ways around the budgetary constraints.

Shoemaker doesn’t know if the UCC campus as a whole plans to hold regular drills in the future, but one of her goals is to run a drill for her staff every term. That will keep the plan fresh in everyone’s minds and allow for adjustments to address any changes to the store’s layout or placement of fixtures, etc. In her opinion, drills should be mandatory.

Deby Niebaum, bookstore specialist, floor, UCC Bookstore, supports upping the frequency of emergency drills. “We had the training in 2014, but only one drill that I remember. It would be helpful to have regular drills at least one every six months. … The more prepared you are, the better, just like fire drills are done regularly. The students should also be involved so they know what to do; when we practiced, it was just the staff.”

Allen urges college store staffers to take such active-shooter/lockdown training seriously.

“It’s not easy and it’s not fun, but it’s important,” she says, adding that the training she received was “a harrowing experience” that included watching videos and listening to 911 tapes in order to learn from other school’s tragic experiences.

“Many people left the training,” she recalls. “They didn’t think it was important, or it was upsetting, or it made them angry. Remember your school is not trying to torture you or be mean—they are training employees in the event of a tragedy such as ours and it is so important to take it seriously.”

Shoemaker says the last two in-service sessions she and her staff attended at UCC had updates and refresher information about the school’s active-shooter plan. “The session seemed to be optional, based on the number of people who attended,” she recalls. “It should be mandatory.”

To fine-tune your plan, Shoemaker suggests convening a staff brainstorming session to see what questions and ideas arise. “Play the devil’s advocate so that you’re really thinking over what could happen, what options you have, and how things could change at a moment’s notice,” she says. “For instance, if you’re in lockdown and then someone begins banging on a locked door, begging you to let them in, how do you know who is really on the other side of that door? A quick decision to open the door because it seems like the right thing to do could turn into a massacre because it’s the shooter or an accomplice trying to trick you into opening the door.

“Every decision you make will have a consequence, good or bad. If you’re prepared and know what you need to do, that will take a lot of guesswork out of the equation and take the burden off those needing to make that kind of decision.

“I’ve heard over and over again through the years that there are three kinds of people in a tragic event,” Shoemaker says. “The one who rushes into the fire, the one who runs from the fire, and the one who watches in shock and is unable to do anything. I don’t think you will know who you are until you are part of such an event. However, I do believe that with training, the ability to participate in drills, and a plan, you are better prepared to make decisions that have to be made.”

Resources for Active-Shooter Planning

The Department of Homeland Security offers a booklet, Active Shooter: How to Respond, available as a PDF.

The FBI maintains an active-shooter webpage that provides many resources, including a video showing how to respond during an active-shooter event.

The Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools (REMS) Technical Assistance Center (http://rems.ed.gov) supports K-12 schools, colleges, and universities with emergency-management resources, training, and publications, including:

• A PDF of the Guide for Developing High-Quality Emergency Operations Plans for Institutions of Higher Education provides resources and references for development and implementation of an institutional emergency-management plan, or improvement to an existing plan, and includes a section on active-shooter situations.
• Active Shooter Educational Sheet from Homeland Security
• Active Shooter Event Quick Reference Guide from Homeland Security

Run. Hide. Fight.

The recommended responses to plan for an active shooter in your workplace.

Because most active-shooter incidents end within 10-15 minutes, which may be before police or security personnel arrive on the scene, store staff and anyone else on campus have to be prepared to respond to the situation on their own. The Department of Homeland Security recommends that you:

Run—If an escape route is accessible, evacuate as quickly as possible. Stores should map out such routes and have staffers walk through them periodically to reinforce where all exits are and what route to take depending on where they are in the store. Customers and anyone else in the store are likely to follow staffers’ lead during an emergency, as they did at UCC.

Hide—If evacuation isn’t possible, get out of sight or to a room that can be locked. An active-shooter plan should include designated safe spaces, if available, where staff and customers can shelter in place. Ideally, a safe space should have more than one entry/exit point so that you aren’t trapped.

Lock the door (you can also use zip-ties or extension cords to hold a door shut) and blockade it with heavy furnishings, etc. Turn off any source of noise, such as a radio or TV, and silence cellphones and pagers. If possible, dial 911; if it’s too dangerous to speak, just keep the line open so the dispatcher can hear what’s going on.

If you can talk to a 911 operator, provide as much of this information as you know:

• Location of the shooter
• Number of shooters if more than one
• Physical description(s)
• Number and type of weapons
• Number of potential victims at the location of the incident

Also, the operator will need the street address where you are, not the building name you probably use under normal circumstances, so make sure everyone on staff knows that information.

Fight—As a last resort only, if you’re unable to run or hide, or your hiding place has been compromised, attack the shooter as aggressively as possible, yelling and throwing items or using improvised weapons such as fire extinguishers or tools.

“I keep wasp spray at my desk and plan on putting it in every room,” says Micque Shoemaker, manager, UCC Bookstore, Umpqua Community College, Roseburg, OR. “It is accurate up to 30 or 40 ft,. depending on the brand you buy, and it’s a weapon of sorts if it came to it. Aim for the eyes and face of the threat and it could make a difference.”

Depending on who arrives on the scene first, responding officers may be in patrol uniforms, plainclothes (if detectives, such as the first to engage the shooter at Umpqua), or tactical gear such as Kevlar helmets and bulletproof vests. They may shout commands or push people to the ground for safety. When law enforcement arrives, for your own safety:

• DO put down anything in your hands (purse, backpack, bag, jacket).
• DO raise your hands with fingers spread and keep your hands visible at all times.
• DON’T scream, yell, or point.
• DON’T make any quick movements toward the officers.
• DON’T stop to ask for help in evacuating.

“People are encouraged to hunker down and be quiet,” says Jasmine Allen, bookstore specialist lead/textbooks, UCC Bookstore. “They are discouraged from leaving. Running to a car could make someone a target and there is a huge concern of a bottleneck on the road and blocking emergency-response access if everyone tried to leave at once.”

The first officers on the scene will focus on locating, containing, and neutralizing the shooter. Rescue teams will follow after them to treat and remove casualties.

Maintain a crisis kit in your designated safe space(s). This might include flashlights, a first-aid kit, radios, floor plans, and a staff roster with emergency phone numbers.

Make sure your plan takes into account evacuation contingencies for individuals with special needs or disabilities.

Don’t rely on campus communications remaining intact once an incident erupts. In February 2010, when a biology professor at the University of Alabama in Hunstville opened fire on her colleagues during a departmental meeting, killing three and wounding three others, the ensuing volume of web traffic—tens of thousands of hits per hour—caused the school’s server and website to crash, hampering the ability to get information out. The Virginia Tech website experienced 150,000 unique visitors per hour after the shootings on that campus, its servers having to transfer more than 28 times the normal volume of data.