For the first time ever, Arizona State University implemented a text messaging service last week designed to alert faculty and students in the event of any sort of major emergency.
According to ASU, the service is limited to only those whom have an ASURITE ID and is intended to "provide brief and immediate instructions to the campus community." The text messages would only be sent out if an immediate and major emergency were present on or around one of ASU's campuses.
This system is one of many systems being implemented by campuses across the nation, and is actually on the lighter side of actions taken by other universities. The concept itself is as groundbreaking as much as it is horrifying. By what manner has the American society — no less the collegiate society, felt the need for such unprecedented communal protection and communication from widespread (gun) violence?
As a journalist and a student who does not acknowledge any real personal fear toward such a local disaster, my first inclination is like most Americans and students here. It is to assume the threat is nonexistent or so small that I show disinterest in the system and criticize it as unnecessary. It's the easiest way to handle this unlikely reality.
Unfortunately I realize that I cannot do that. Say what you will about terrorism, this is different. There is no way to manage or predict the nauseating events which have continued to transpire over recent years. There is no color system or warning level because the events that have occurred from Columbine to Virginia Tech to just recently at Delaware State have no order and no logic.
But these "unbelievable", "unthinkable", and "unpredictable" tragedies nevertheless continue to rampage not only the United States, but especially the collegiate and scholarly communities. Typically it's more commonplace to assume VT was an isolated incident as we light a candle and hold a vigil, but what needs to be realized is that VT is far from an isolated incident, it is simply the most appalling example.
Appalling in not only what happened but how, as it took two hours for the second shooting, a shooting which took 30 of the 32 massacred, to take place after the first shooting. Two hours! Even the most unsophisticated plan in the world could have prevented the worst shooting in United States history.
But there was no plan, there was no lockdown, no text messages or phone calls or realistic communication (emails were sent late), there was only the sound of bullets and then the silence of death.
Virginia Tech is the revolting epitome of the realistic danger that we all want to disregard, that in my own publication I dislike conceding. Because I sincerely believe Arizona State, though it is incredibly large and populated, is a tight community of students and faculty, who seem to get along nicely and coexist as
well as any community.
But without throwing freedom to safety, we must acknowledge that, if anything, a college campus (especially a large campus) is as susceptible a spot to be terrorized by gun violence as anywhere else in the nation. We must acknowledge this possibility and act in a way which allows us our basic rights but grants us our available safety.
Oct. 29 is only the 5 year anniversary of the day Tucson SWAT found themselves swarming the halls of UA after a deranged gunman shot and killed four, including himself. According to the New York Times, just this year there was a shooting that killed two at Delaware State, a student gunman located and arrested at Saint Johns University, and a public stabbing at the University of Colorado. However all of these latter examples had systems in place (more than likely because of VT) that alerted faculty and students on how to react, preventing a full-on catastrophe while maintaining order.
I begrudgingly have to congratulate ASU on being proactive. Do I believe there will be a shooting here? God no! But what articles would this State Press publish should we as a community look blindly at recent events and do nothing to prevent the same from happening here? What would we cry about? Our losses or our failure to prevent them?
For the first time ever ASU and other campuses are using casual, commonplace advancements in our everyday conversational technology to their security benefit.
Fear has spread to resolution — not panic. We do not throw privacy to the fire; rather we use a tool we already have to increase our benefit as a community.
I'm not panicking and I'm not afraid, but begrudgingly, I am aware.
Reach the reporter at: joshua.spivack@asu.edu.
