Senseless tragedy is a reminder
The February 14 tragedy at Northern Illinois University was a sobering reminder that all universities are vulnerable to such acts of madness, no matter how well prepared they may be. Here at UIS, we are maximizing the safety of our students, faculty and staff by augmenting our response plan with a new emergency notification system. It allows us to reach the members of the campus community more rapidly in case of a life-threatening emergency. So far, more than 1,000 of you have signed up to receive text message alerts, and we encourage all of you to do so at https://emergency.uis.edu/ . We have stepped up our efforts to complete detailed emergency plans for each building on campus, and are looking for other ways to keep our campus safe and secure. Meanwhile, our hearts go out to the families and friends of those who died at NIU on Valentine's Day. Our thoughts are also with the students who were injured. We pray for their full recovery.
(To hear our police chief talk about safety, watch the first part of my recent "Chancellor's Chat" by clicking on "Sights and Sounds" on the UIS homepage."
posted by Chancellor Ringeisen at 8:58 AM
9 Comments:
I just hope when the emergency plan is put into place, the students infomed of the plans.
It seems the students at NIU did not know what to do, or where to go.
I think that a student at uis is crazy to do the same thing. Becareful!!! NO WEAPONS IN THE CAMPUS!!!
What a SAD SAD day.. I have a lot of friends from HS that attend NIU and I wouldn't know what to do if something was to happen to them. It is so sad that this keeps happening, obviously something is wrong with the way we deal with things. This is a complete tragedy that has struck so close to home!
Thank you Chancellor Ringeisen; I believe our new notification system is a great addition. It might be a good idea that within the next few weeks, the university do a test run of the system, such as send out an email to all students, faculty and staff as a notice, and then send a test message to all of those contacts we've collected. This would probably put some minds at ease in the wake of this tragedy, and ensure that everyone has entered their information correctly.
I am a student in the geology department of NIU and contrary to what's been mentioned here and in some news, the NIU have an emergency plan. It was posted in all over the campus, in the dorms, in the hallways/corridors of the building, in front of each elevator shaft and even in the covered parking garages. We are grateful for this emergency plan because without that we wouldnt know what to do. The first action for that kind of incident was to follow the lock down procedures and almost everyone of the buildings executed these procedures. Maybe the students that you've seen were those coming from the scene. But this is not time for finger-pointing and who's to blame, let us all be glad that most of the students are now safe and let us pray for the lives that were lost in this tragic incident. Let the healing process begin.
My deepest sympathies go out to the students and faculty of the NIU community. I m French and here we cannot understand this violent act occured. I m not here to criticize your system, just thinking about victims, families, buddies... I hope that it will never happen at UIS or another US campus even if I m little bit sceptic due to the behaviour of some crazy students (marginal rate).
My thoughts and prayers are with you. Sincerely.
I was really excited to see a tribute graphic posted on the UIS website but then was shocked and extremely upset to see if go only a few days later. The chancellor mentions how we know someone at NIU yet UIS decides to leave that tribute for only a few days only to replace it with some stupid Brookens Library link. I am sorry but what happened at NIU was such a tragedy and I thank god it didn't happen here..but what if it did? We would want all the support we could get. It makes me really sad and frustrated to see how much UIS obviously doesn't care. Many other schools all across the nation still have some type of tribute to NIU..but go figure, just like VA tech, there is nothing on UIS's website. They could have at least kept it on for a week.
The UIS home page does contain a tribute graphic. It links to the U of I condolence message board.
Perhaps instead of venting in a negative manner, a more useful and sincere approach would be to send a card, note or email with words of encouragement and urge others to do the same.
TR
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