Following college shootings, BU students worried about safety, trust BUPD

In the wake of recent shootings at and violent threats to college campuses around the nation, several students said they nonetheless still feel safe on Boston University’s Charles River Campus. And while threats of such nature have not occurred recently at BU, students said they can’t fully fathom the idea of an active shooter on campus.

Within the past week, many college students in Philadelphia and Oregon cannot say the same. On Tuesday, a man threatened a student with a gun and forced the Community College of Philadelphia to go on lockdown. On Oct. 1, a gunman opened fire at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, in a tragedy that left the gunman and nine others dead.

Scott Pare, the deputy director of public safety at the BU Police Department, said if there were ever an active shooter or threat of violence on campus, the BU Emergency Alert System would be helpful in sending out information quickly and accurately.

“We strive to be timely but we also want to be accurate,” Pare said. “The first reports are often not true so we don’t want to send out the wrong information. [In the event of campus violence,] BU Alert System notifications will be sent out to all students to stay away from a certain area and stay locked in their dorms.”

However, the BUPD’s procedures extend further than just BU Alerts, Pare said.

“The policy of our department is to protect life by any means,” he said, “by trying to make contact with the active shooter including arrest or the use of deadly force, if necessary.”

While the duties of BUPD do not cover the constant monitoring of all BU facilities such as classroom buildings, Pare said BUPD has taken measures to provide students with knowledge of what to do in case of an active shooter. Pare also said he believes the need for safety of students should not only be about what occurs on campus.

“We’ve done some active shooting training. There’s an excellent video called ‘Run, Hide, Fight’ that shows what to do in case of an active shooter anywhere,” Pare said. “I think we have to go beyond our walls of our school … We need to make sure students are safe everywhere.”

When asked about the possibility of an active shooter on campus, many BU students said they overall felt safe. Their trust, they said, lies in the hands of BUPD.

Maylin Chong, a junior in Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, said if an incident were to happen on the BU campus, she has faith that BUPD would handle it.

“I don’t think it would happen but there’s always the possibility that it would happen,” she said. “I would trust BUPD, but since it’s an open campus you never really know where the shooter could go, or they could be gone by the time BUPD gets there.”

Gabi Serrano, a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences, said she thinks BUPD still has some improvements to make to campus safety.

“I don’t think there’s enough safety in just regards to who can enter any classrooms,” she said. “Except for CFA, there aren’t any swipe-ins or monitors so anybody can come into a building with a weapon and no one could know. There are also no metal detectors on campus. I mean we see BUPD driving around, but they are really not in the buildings [because] it’s not really their job.”

Several BU students are aware of the recent violent threats at other colleges and expressed the concern that these threats can happen anywhere.

“It’s obviously very disconcerting because it’s something that you know is in the air and can happen anywhere because just the way the system is built here,” said third-year exchange student Nikolai Larsen. “I’m from Denmark where there’s very strict gun laws [and] where there aren’t as many shootings of people like that ever. Especially for me it’s very scary to hear about.”

Larsen said he cannot wrap his head around the idea of being faced with a shooter on campus.

“There’s really no way to kind of play that scenario out in your head when you haven’t actually experienced it before. It’s so distant from any experience you’ve had before,” he said. “It would be very jarring. It would put you outside your own life.”

Brett Eiffes, a junior in Sargent, said she is from the Philadelphia area and the threats so close to home reminded her it could happen anywhere.

“I was a little bit freaked out … I live like 20 minutes outside of Philadelphia. I was definitely a little bit concerned,” she said. “I think that it’s probably my biggest nightmare especially since we do live in a city and it can happen, but I do feel super safe on campus.”

Lauren VanValkenburg, a sophomore in CAS, said she finds college campus violence terrifying and unsettling.

“Coming from high school and hearing about this kind of stuff, it’s so sad, but now being in college it seems so much more real,” she said. “Being in a big city, it makes it so much more of a risk.”