After watching the terrible news about Virginia Tech shooting last week, I went to teach my recitation sessions in Talbert 113 and Clemens 217 ?N I arrived five minutes before the class began and checked around my classroom, and thought about how to protect my students if a shooting happens here.
I realized that I was in a one-door classroom. The door can be locked from outside of the classroom by the key but cannot be locked from inside. The only desk is too small to stock the door. Even worse, if someone breaks the window in order to escape, they will land in the restaurant 15 feet below Talbert 113 or on the concrete walkway 12 feet below Clemens 217.
An automated 9mm handgun can fire 50 rounds within a minute ?N a resulting massacre is so short that even a cell phone can capture the whole scene. As we watched on TV from the massacres at Columbine and Virginia Tech, all policeman can usually do is move victims to ambulances after gunmen run out of bullets; therefore increasing the force and mobility of policeman might still not be enough to prevent a massacre. Increasing the security hardware in classrooms so that the faculty and students can respond to an emergency immediately is the proper way to minimize harm if something terrible like this happens at UB.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
