Do You Have A Plan? | IT in AV
I would like to start this article out with a warning that some of this information might be a trigger. Please know there are resources out there and don’t hesitate to use them. With that statement I am going to go into this month’s article. To borrow the words from UNLV’s President, on December 6th 2023 UNLV joined a list that no school wants to be on; three faculty members were killed and one seriously injured. This article will not go into details about that event or the topic of gun control. This article will cover what I believe higher education can do. Please note I am not in law enforcement or a subject matter expert in this field. These are just ideas I feel higher education should be looking at.
Plan:
The first and foremost is to have a plan. This plan should cover different types of situations. It should cover evacuation as well as shelter in place and anything else you can think of. Once you have a plan, this plan should be in a location that every member of the team can access it. Not only should it be in a central place, the team should also be aware of the plan and where they can find it. Once the plan is in place then it needs to be practiced. Our brain does its best to try and save energy, which means it is always trying to revert back to things that are familiar. This is even more critical in a fight or flight situation. If you do not practice the plan, then when a situation comes up you will not know how to act. This reminds me of a story I heard years ago. We all know grade schools do fire drills. The drill is to prepare teachers and students to evacuate in the event of a fire. Teachers and students may not know when these drills will happen but the administration does. One day a teacher noticed a fire in a classroom. The teacher pulled the fire alarm and all the students and teachers evacuated like they had practiced. Because the administration never practiced the plan, they did not know what to do in this situation. Luckily no one was hurt but that is why it is important for everyone to know the plan and to practice it.
The Tech:
What would an IT in AV article be if we did not talk about technology? I will not say technology will prevent situations like December 6th from happening but they can play a critical part in getting information out.
Text Messages Alert/Apps
Schools should have either a mass text messaging alert system and/or an app. These technology options are a quick and easy way to get a message out to everyone. These are only as good as if people sign up for them or download the app. I feel it should be strongly suggested, during orientation/ employee onboarding, that folks sign up for these services. Now that we have people on these services we need to make sure they pay attention to the alerts. This means that these systems should not be used for everyday types of communication. We get flooded with notifications from all sides. We get social media notifications, email notifications, text messages from friends/family, etc.. If schools use these mass communication channels to send out messages about signing up for classes, joining a club, this fun event is going on, etc.. then these messages just become noise in an already noisy environment. This could lead to folks to ignore messages, block those numbers, or even delete the app.
Public Alert Systems
We know some faculty members do not permit students to have their phones out during class and may even ask phones to be silent/turned off. This is to help students to stay focused in class but prevent them from getting a mass message that we mentioned above. I am not suggesting that faculty allow students to have their phones on or out. What I am suggesting is that schools should invest in public alert systems along with the text message system. There are many out there and I will not list any in this article in the concern of missing one. I will talk about how these systems can be helpful.
Public Alert Systems are like fire alarms. They can be hardware installed in the classrooms and hallways. They can have flashing lights, scrolling text, and voice to text as well. When an alert is triggered these systems go off with a message letting everyone know about a situation. These systems can even include software that can be installed on the computers, that take over the whole screen, and even have an option to broadcast over hardline phones. Some of these systems will even integrate with the school's text messaging platform allowing for the two systems to send alerts out at the same time from one location. Another thing about some of the public alert systems is they can be triggered automatically or even from a pull station like a fire alarm.
Conclusion:
In conclusion I hope another school never joins the list that no school wants to be on. Unfortunately we can not just hope but need to prepare. Just like we prepare for cyber attacks but hope never to have one, we should prepare for situations on campus but hope one never happens. When we prepare, we should keep in mind that there is no one size fits all solution. We need to use every option we can think of, even ones that I did not mention in this article. The goal is to get out correct information and directions to everyone we can as quickly as we can. When we don’t get out correct information quickly this could lead to problems. Beside getting the message out we also need to make sure everyone knows and practice the plan. Ask yourself, ‘what would I do in x situation’ If you can’t clearly answer that question with full details then you need to practice more. As the quote goes ‘Don’t practice until you get it right, practice until you can’t get it wrong.’
