Getting Word Out About Shootings at Delaware State

Someone shot and badly wounded two students on the Delaware State University campus in Dover around 1 a.m. Eastern time and is still at large this morning. The campus is locked down as police hunt for the shooter.

The incident looks to be the first major test of college and university leaders’ resolve in the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting rampage to act more quickly and to communicate better and faster with students, faculty and staff when violence and danger strike the campus.

The university has a notice on its website that classes are canceled today, that students who commute to the school and most employees (”nonessential personnel”) should not come to the campus, and that those who live on campus should stay put in their dorms until further notice.

It says it is also distributing flyers and contacting students and staff by phone to tell them these things. And it has set up a telephone info line, the same one it uses to get the word out about cancellations due to snowstorms and the like.

The campus police said early this morning that they have not yet been able to speak with the two wounded students because of their condition, and thus have little to go on so far in pursuing the shooter or shooters. Thus they also have a telephone tip line set up for anyone who might know something.

(Common decency and common sense implore the casually curious not to tie up either line unnecessarily; The Lede hopes to minimize the temptation by not reproducing the actual phone numbers here.)

Virginia Tech was stiffly criticized in the wake of the mass shootings there for failing to take steps like these quickly. While some colleges did have lock down and crisis communications plans ready before the incident there, many others scrambled to put them together afterward. The Lede hasn’t learned yet which category Delaware State is in.

But as we await further news about the police effort to catch the shooter, many eyes around the country will be watching how well its measures work.

They will also be watching an experiment, set to begin Monday at Purdue University, to test whether text messaging can be used effectively for crisis notification on the campus. More about that here.

Addendum 8:23 a.m. Eastern

This factoid may have nothing to do with anything, but Delaware State is the university where the three students gunned down in a Newark, N.J., schoolyard in August were enrolled.
By Patrick J. Lyons
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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What circumstance, cause or event leads to something like this happening?

How does news like this affect you? Does your opinion of gun laws change? Do you think more about health insurance and the significance of mental health? What else?

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