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Hello, my name is Bob Harkins.
I'm the Associate Vice President for Campus Safety and Security
for the University of Texas at Austin.
I want to thank each of you for taking time today to view these presentations.
For the last two years myself and other members of the campus
safety and security community have visited throughout the
campus to give presentations on our system here at the
University of Texas.
This presentation will serve as kind of a capsule cast of an
overview of that system.
We have divided it up into four divisions.
The first deals with the history of campus violence.
The second deals with the organization, structure, plans,
and planning that have gone into the University of Texas at Austin
Emergency Management System.
The third element is the various types of communications that we
use during emergencies and the fourth element is that outlining
the individual responsibilities that we all have at the
University of Texas.
Let's go ahead and get started with the history of campus violence.
The history of campus violence begins for the University of
Texas on August 1st 1966 when Charles Whitman,
a graduate student in the school of architecture,
killed his wife, killed his mother,
and then ascended the 307 foot tower and began a 96-minute
shooting rampage on the students and the citizens of Austin.
"This is a KLRN news bulletin.
A sniper with a high powered rifle has taken up a position on
the observation deck of the tower on the campus of the
University of Texas.
He is firing at persons within his range.
All Austin area residents are warned to stay away from the
University of Texas campus area."
This resulted in a total of 17 people being killed,
30 people being wounded on that tragic day.
But even in the worst of tragedies, good can come out of that.
From that situation the decision was made to arm the police at
the University of Texas and across many college campuses in the nation.
The concept of SWAT teams was evolved and became kind of a
standard practice for police in these types of situations.
And another one that's not thought of often is kind of the
first time that EMS trauma centers were really called into
a need at Brackenridge Hospital there was identified the need
for the trauma center and trauma centers kind of began from that point forward.
We move forward to April 1999 when in Colorado at Columbine
High School, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold came to school
that day on 20 April and began shooting in their classrooms and
in the hallways of that high school.
The result was 13 killed.
There were 24 wounded and the significant event that comes out
of that was watching police respond to that event.
We had police officers that arrived on scene and they did
the normal police practice of sealing off the area and waiting
on SWAT teams to arrive.
In the meantime shooting was taking place inside the facility.
Out of that tragedy came the concept of alert training and
the training of police officers, each and every police officer,
to form up into teams to go into to take out somebody who is an
active shooter or somebody who is doing great damage to a community.
We move forward to April 2007 when Cho came to Virginia Tech
that day to do violence to the students at the --
at Virginia Tech University.
Cho killed two students in a residence hall.
While the campus police and everybody descended on that
residence hall, he went to a classroom building,
chained the doors, and began killing people in classrooms.
He ended up killing 30 people in those classrooms - in the four
classrooms, and wounding an additional 17 before he was
actually killed by the officers that reacted to that situation.
What came out of Virginia Tech is a big lesson for everybody
was that two hours between the initial shootings in the
residence hall and the shootings in the classroom building.
The communications that did not take place to the campus have
become an area that many people have looked at as a great
deficiency - that university's ability to react to that situation.
As we move forward, we come forward to September 28, 2010 -
University of Texas again.
When on this day Colton Tooley decided that he would come to
campus to take his own life.
You see here on the bus, you see him moving on and sitting down,
you can see the protrusion out of his backpack,
that's his AK-47.
He departs on Guadalupe and moves up to the campus, and on
this slide you'll see where there are some X's where he
began firing in the air.
He was as close to you as the person sitting next to you when
he decided to open fire with his AK-47.
He expended 11 rounds outside, had over 30 rounds on his possession.
When he heard the siren go off on campus and heard police
sirens responding, he pulled a ski mask over his face,
went into the Perry-CastaƱeda library,
went to the sixth floor and took his own life.
We were lucky that day, sad that we lost a student from the
University of Texas, but very lucky that he decided that he
was not going to kill others and only kill himself.
He came to campus to commit suicide and then that's what he did.
When we responded to the events on September 28th we used a
variety of means of communications.
Within seven minutes we had 54,000 text messages
distributed to the campus.
We used sirens, the text messages that I had indicated,
we used e-mail, we used the World Wide Web, we used pagers,
TV's, social media, radios, and public media to get the message
out to the campus.
We had had cross training with the Austin Police Department.
As a matter of fact the first two teams that went into the
library to eliminate the threat were combined teams between
Austin Police Department and University of Texas Police Department.
Our ability to do this was based on our cross training that we had done earlier.
So September 28th when you look back from August of '66 to
September 28, 2010 a lot has happened and a lot of things
have been done on this campus.
Let me now explain to you how we got to where we are.
So the big question is: How did we, the University of Texas, get there?
We're going to look next at the structure and the programs that
we have here at the University of Texas.
If you go back to September 11th 2001,
we all can remember the terror and anguish that this nation
went through as we reacted to the events of that day.
9/11 was a significant date for this nation,
but also for the campus as we began to examine what we were
doing and how would -- how we would respond to a terrorist or
some type of active shooting incident on campus.
Dr. Pat Clubb the Vice President of the university operations
formed up the Campus Safety Security Committee in its
infancy and began to give it some instructions and guidance
and finely in 2005 the decision was made by Dr. Clubb to form
the Office of the Associate Vice President for Campus Safety and Security.
That is the position that I hold at this point in time.
I oversee the director of emergency preparedness,
the chief of police, the director of parking and
transportation, the university fire marshal,
and the director of environment health and safety.
The mission of the Office of the Associate Vice President for
Campus Safety and Security is ensure the safety welfare and
security of all people at the University of Texas.
The five values of trust, leadership, communications,
teamwork, and excellence form the bedrock on which the office has been developed.
There are five goals that the University of Texas Office for
Campus Safety and Security has, focusing on the development of
programs, the establishment of communications,
finding best practices and implementing them from across
the nation, being a leader and developing the leadership across
campus to react to situations, and to promote safety awareness.
Most university's are organized in silo-type institutions where
there are not a lot of vertical communications,
most of the communications is linear.
A university like the University of Texas is typical of that type of example.
The Campus Safety and Security Committee that you see depicted
on this slide is our attempt to begin to break down those silos
when it comes to emergencies on campus.
We meet monthly, and I chair that,
and we have all the discussion we have discussion with all the
key players when it comes to any safety and security issue on campus.
The president is the ultimate decision maker in any campus
emergency that we might have.
He has with him a core crisis management team that forms the
nucleus for his senior leadership to be able to make decision.
You see depicted to this slide the current members of the core
crisis management team for university of the Texas.
We also have spent some time developing assessment teams
because in order to give the president the information that
he needs to make decisions somebody's got to be able to
make a decision and make an analysis in terms of what's
going on and then be able to provide some leadership options.
Our core campus assessment teams are responsible for identifying,
assessing and managing incidents,
and then to determine appropriate actions.
We conduct investigations with these teams as appropriate and
then we develop and implement an action plan,
and then finally do the follow-up necessary to make
certain that all things are covered.
The dean of students has developed a Critical Incident
Response Team that you see depicted to this slide.
This diverse group pulls together to look at the impact
on students and the impact on student events on campus
whenever there's an incident.
There are two teams that look at individuals that maybe having difficulty.
The first of which you see on this slide is the Behavior
Assessment Team or as we call it the BAT Team.
The BAT Team focuses on students that are in crisis or in trouble
or having difficulty to try and develop a plan once again to
make certain that student can have success as well as the university.
If it's a staff member or a facility member the threat
assessment team or the TAT Team they - accomplishes the same
functions as the BAT team only dealing strictly with staff and
facility here on campus.
Both of these teams job are to make assessments and to provide
options and plans to the senior leadership of the university and
for them to resolve any issues that might be there.
As I mentioned earlier there are many out groves of what happened
during the tragic incident at Virginia Tech.
Foremost in these is communications and I discussed a
little bit about how we sent out, for our incident,
54,000 text messages in seven minutes.
We'll talk a little bit more about that a little bit later on.
But the main program that came out of the tragedy at Virginia
Tech for the University of Texas was the establishment of the
Behavior Concerns Advice Line.
This is a phone line that goes directly into the dean of
students' office and the dean of students will sort out whether
or not it's a staff problem, facility problem,
or student problem and kind of what resources we can put behind
that - that problem to be able to resolve it.
If it's an emergency that looks like it's impending danger or
some type of violence it goes directly to the University of
Texas Police Department and we respond to that.
We have multiple hundreds of calls annually on this line and
it has proven to be, in the words of the chief of police,
the best insurance to campus safety is BCAL.
The University of Texas Police Department focuses on community policing.
By community policing we mean outreaching to the community and
being engaged with all of the individuals on campus to ensure
the safety and security of the campus.
We spend a lot of time with our police officers communicating
policy across the campus to all groups.
We do crime be prevention surveys where we can look at all
areas to see if we can do anything to kind of prevent property crimes.
There are also if you go to the University of Texas website,
you noted up here on this slide there are to videos one called
"Flashpoint" and one called "When Lightning Strikes".
These videos are excellent videos, about 20 minutes long,
and if you have a University of Texas EID you can go to the
website listed on the slide and pull down those videos and spend
20 minutes looking at them and to kind of see what are the
indications an individual exhibits before they "crack" if
you will or before they "flash" and then the "When Lightning
Strikes" is what to do if you're caught in an active shooting
situation within your facility.
Both of which are excellent videos that will help you and
the people you are with do -- know what to do in the event of an emergency.
The RAD class listed on the slide is a class that's very
popular to teach people, particularly females,
self defense against people that might try and do them harm.
I would ask each of you also to sign up for Campus Watch in the
address that is listed here on the side and that will tell you
kind of what's happening each day on campus in terms of
activities that involve the police department.
Social media is something all of us have to figure out and come
to a better grasp in terms of how to deal with that form of
media during an emergency and during an event.
I'll talk a little bit more about it a little bit later on
during the communications portion but suffice it to say
that on September 27th, the day before the shooting on campus,
UTPD had 400 plus friends on their Facebook account.
On the 29th they had over 12,000.
We communicated and used social media to communicate to the
campus and to the community what was going on this campus on the September 28th.
There's also some safety protocols,
i.e. posters that you can download from the University of
Texas Police Department that talk about what to do in the
event of an active shooter in your facility.
Backing up all of us on campus is the Counseling and Mental Health Center.
It is there to service students and to provide individual and
group counseling, psychiatric services, obviously 24-hour,
7-day-a-week, 365-day-a-year phone counseling if needed to
assist in medical withdrawals or the adjustment from classes if
there are large periods of absence because of illness.
It's a place where you can go to get help with Voices Against
Violence that try and provide counseling in group sessions for
people that have had violence occur in their life.
If a student has a drug or an alcohol problem they can get
counseling through this center.
There are classes on managing stress and how to de-stress
yourself a little bit, particularly as it gets towards
finals time or some of the other major times on campus,
and to me the program I'd really like to emphasize is a program called Be That One.
Be That One asks each of us to reach out to any students we see
that are in stress and make certain they don't hurt
themselves so if you want to know how to help your friends
go look at Be That One, remember BCAL.
Those two programs will help us all be the watchers of our
brothers and our sisters out there trying to take care of
each other here at the University of Texas.
For staff and facility the Employee Assistance Program also
as a great tool to be able to help people at work that are
having difficulty.
Health Point provides the opportunity for people to --
people on campus to understand how to live a healthier life and
how to take better care of their body.
You can see the website there that will kind of lead toward that.
The employee assist program itself provides individual
counseling, manager counseling, grief counseling,
and most people don't think about grief counseling,
but if there's been a death or a tragic event in an office we
need to provide time for people to grieve and if you contact the
employee assist program they have grief counselors that can
come and help you and your department work through that
tragic situation.
They also work on workplace safety and crisis management,
as well as the work/life balancing and how do you balance
that between your home life and the University of Texas.
We haven't stopped there in terms of programs that we've got
in place on campus.
Have An Exit Strategy is a strategy that was formulated in
conjunction with the University of Texas and the state fire marshal's office.
It came out of the 2003 Rhode Island nightclub fire where over
a hundred people died because they all tried to get out the
same entrance they came in when there were other exits that were available.
What this program asks you to do is no matter where you go,
wherever you work, at home, and wherever you play,
make certain you see and find a way to get out of any facility
in the event of an emergency.
Most recently think about the shooting in Colorado at a movie
theatre and when you go to a movie theatre take a look and
find out where those exits are, when you go to a club downtown
take a look and find out where those exits are,
in the room you're sitting in right now, in a classroom,
where are the exits, how can you get out of the facility in the
event of an emergency?
The program that has done an awful lot to the campus and came
out of the -- the need came out of the September 28th incident
on the University at Texas campus as the Building Manager Program.
We have now identified 165 buildings in which we have
people living and working in on campus.
We have 165 building managers that are designated by a senior
official and have the responsibility for coordinating
security, emergency planning, renovation and repairs,
special projects and events, and communications.
Contact your building manager.
Get to know your building manager because that person is
building your department evacuation plans and your
department communications plans - very critical program for
everybody to know and understand.
So who is your building manager?
The next section we're looking at is a section that I call Plans and Planning.
You see on this slide the five plans that we developed to talk
about how we do emergencies here at the University of Texas.
You also see a link on the slide where you can go and download
these plans from the University of Texas website and be able to
have the plans available in your offices at your desk.
It deals with our overall emergency plan,
our infectious disease, our severe weather,
our building management and restricted assess plan,
as well as business continuity.
At the University of Texas we identified 46 incidents that we
were concerned about and wanted to include in our plan.
We evaluated these incidents, whether or not the probability
was low, medium, or high, the probability of incurrence,
and also the impact on health and safety,
and the impact on property and environment.
We reevaluate these annually and make certain that we still have
the right incidents as well as the right probability evaluations.
You'll see this slide plus the next slide that show those for you.
So what's in the University of Texas Emergency Plan?
It becomes the university's strategic operational plan.
It talks about all of our levels of emergencies, responses,
and readiness conditions.
It lays out the procedure for the establishment of command
control and communications.
It is based on the National Incident Management System
or as we like to call NIMS.
It includes incident command, interagency cooperation,
and public information.
It contains a lot of the policies and procedure which
apply regardless of the type of the emergency.
We like to think of it as all hazards and flexible but the
biggest thing to remember that the university's Emergency
Management Plan does notes not replace department's
responsibilities to develop their own emergency plans and emergency actions.
I mentioned at Virginia Tech one of the major lessons learned was
the need and the requirement to communicate with the campus and
communicate very rapidly.
This next section I'll try and lay out for you how we
communicated and how we communicate now on the campus of
the University of Texas at Austin.
We rely a lot of pagers on campus as perhaps being the most
reliable means of communication that we have electrically.
We have all building managers with pagers,
we have all first responders with pagers,
we even have pagers for a lot of the senior leadership.
I know, I know, I know when you look at the pager and the young
students look at the pager they look at you like you're the
oldest guy in the world technology speaking,
but we found that the pagers have the capability to get
through even when cell phones fail, etc,
so you'll find all of our first responders which are in the A
category carry their pagers 24/7.
Our B category is listed on the slide really kind of consume
mostly the building manager.
When they're here at work they have their pager at their desk
and if we need be we can get messages inside the building to
tell them there's an emergency.
The C category is focused on our senior leadership.
We can get to the senior leadership through the paging system.
We ask them to activate them when there's an emergency going on on campus.
I mentioned earlier that during the shooting on our campus on
September 28th that we sent out
54,000 text messages in seven minutes.
There's a requirement for all students when they register on
the University of Texas campus to either provide emergency
information or to specifically opt out and not desire text message.
If you opt in to text messaging or if you sign up for text
messaging you will receive messages when there's a threat to campus.
You'll also receive messages once a month on the first of the
month when we test the siren system as we verify that our
text messaging system is working.
Currently we have about 65,000 registered for the text
messaging system at the University of Texas.
We all know that we had university e-mail.
We see a lot of it every day.
If you notice on this slide there's a red category that says
urgent.
When we have an emergency on campus we will send things
urgent to you.
It will be identified as urgent safety information but it still
takes us about 45 minutes to chug through 70,
000 e-mails counting staff, faculty, and students,
so it take time to get information out.
The nice thing about e-mail is we can provide more information
that we can on text messaging or on paper.
We have a variety of websites.
You see here's the Campus Safety and Security website.
We will provide links on that site and we will provide
information on that site.
The -- of emergencies that are going on on campus or if you
have questions go to that site and it will get you information.
On the front page of the University of Texas site if you
go down to the bottom it talks about emergency information.
If you click that on the front page of the University of Texas
home page it will take you to this page.
This page tells you that today everything is okay on this
campus, there's no emergency's going on.
If there were an emergency this page would come down an
emergency page with emergency information would go up.
That is where we're going to direct a lot of people when we
start getting an emergency on this campus because we can ask
you to go look and pull information rather than trying
to provide it through a multiple means.
You may by this time be familiar with our outdoor warning system,
our siren system.
We put it in about three months before Virginia Tech because my
major concern was how do we get people off the streets in the
event of a hurricane, tornado, or some type of other weather
event?
We kind of made comments if we ever had another shooting
incident like the Whitman shooting in '66 we could
certainly use it for that.
Little did we know that in 2010 we would need to have that
system available to broadcast an emergency shooting going on on
campus.
This slide shows you the UTPD website.
You can see there where safety videos, Campus Watch,
and the protocols, and Facebook and the social media are all
listed, all you have to do is go click on those and you be able
to get some of the information that we talked a lot about a
little bit earlier.
On approximately 2,000 computers across campus when we a system
called AtHoc.
What AtHoc is is a pop up system that tells you that there's an
emergency going on on this campus.
The ideal use of this system is by the receptionist or somebody
that is always at their desk in an office or in a computer lab,
the manager of the computer lab, or in a classroom the lectern at
the classroom front that can be able to tell people even if they
have their cell phones turned off and their video - laptop
turned off that there's an emergency going on.
Investigate with your department if they have AtHoc and if not
contact us.
Throughout campus you'll see a lot of flat panel and TV sets.
We have two major systems on campus,
one being Time Warner and the other being Grande.
We have the capability during an emergency to flash up that
there's an emergency and then to take people to a specific
channel where we can tell them that there's an emergency going
on and what information that we can provide them.
We are working right now throughout the campus to put
emergency announcements on all the flat panel TV's that you see
in the entrance of buildings going in- takes a little while
to get there, right now it's a little cumbersome to do but
we're doing better getting those information to you via those
flat panel TV's.
In 65 of our buildings we have fire alarm panels that have
audible speakers throughout the building.
We are working right now with the fire marshal and the other
entities on campus to make certain that we can assess those
fire panels to be able to broadcast in a building if
there's an emergency.
If you live in Jester or if you know people that live in Jester
each time they do a drill they use those panels to be able to
broadcast throughout the residence hall.
If you were to look at 9/11 one of the great lessons out of 9/11
was people couldn't talk to each other.
I'm talking about emergency responders, fire, police, EMS,
HazMat, couldn't talk to each other because they all had
different radios.
In Austin, Texas we all have the same radio system.
The police department, the fire department,
the University of Texas, EMS, HazMat,
all have the same radio and we can all get on common channels
and talk to each other.
This system that has been put in place now for the last several
years and has proven great benefit to us to be able to
relate with all the agencies that are around the University
of Texas that we look at, gain help and gain assist.
I mention back on one of the slides talking about emergency
planning that you never miss the opportunity to train and
rehearse.
We have over 2,000 special events on campus each year.
One of them you see depicted on this slide has a hundred
thousand plus people at every event.
Behind this event, this special event,
behind most of the other major events and many of the small
events we have an emergency operation center.
The final question comes down to what are our responsibilities.
In this section we're going on to talk about what do we have to
do ourselves.
Everybody at the University of Texas all of us need to sign up
for text messaging that's the site to go.
We also need to know what to do when the siren is activated and
that is get in a building and wait for further instructions.
We need to know the actions to take place during a Shelter In
Pace and during a Lockdown.
Facility, TA's, and AI'S you need to understand your role -
your role in the classroom.
You are the senior university representative.
You need to make certain you this take care of the students
in your classroom.
I would ask each of you and I know the Provost has asked each
of you to add safety and security and emergency
evacuation in your syllabus also identify individuals that need
assistance to get out of your classroom in the event of an
emergency.
We ask that you take about five minutes at the start of each
class -- each semester and talk to your class about what do you
do if there's going to be an incident in your classroom,
how do you get out, how do you take care of each other?
And the last thing is know your manager because your manager is
the one that's working on the evacuation plan,
and the communications plan for that building,
so know your building manager.
Faculty members, TA's and IA's have a tremendous responsibility
to this campus in the event of an emergency.
Staff members know your building manager, once again,
they're the ones that are developing the emergency plans
and the evacuation plans and understand your building or
department emergency plan and know what actions to take in the
event of a Shelter In Place or a lockdown.
Students and visitors follow the instructions from authorized
personal.
If you're on the streets and the sirens go off get off the
streets and get in the building and know the actions to take
place for a Shelter In Place or for a Lockdown.
The question is what do you do if there's a shooting or some
type of emergency in your building get out state out move
to safety.
If you're caught in the building you can't get out call out and
give emergency providers information,
call 911.What does the individual look like,
where is he at, she at, what can you do and what can you tell
them, but make certain it's vital emergency information.
Keep out and keep out can be two thoughts on keep out,
one is if you get out of the of building stay out keep away from
there don't go back in, but more importantly is block, barricade,
lock a door of an office or a room that your hiding in and
make certain that they can't get in.
If in fact you do that then you need to hide out and that's get
yourself behind some type of protected barriers or some type
of a protective wall that will protect you from gunshots and be
as quite as you can.
Make certain you silence your cell phone.
The last step is the step that most people don't like to talk
about and that's it taking out.
There's if there's a group of you then you gotta make the
decision if you're down to the point don't just lay there and
get shot you've got to go after them.
Use whatever you have available, coffee mugs, chairs, doors,
anything you can to fight this individual and subdue him.
If you make the commitment to take this action then you've got
to make the commitment to follow through and to get the
individual on the ground and under control.
You need to have joint effort if there's more than one person.
Distract the gunman make certain someone takes action against the
individual.
Take 'em out.
There's always a question of what can you do,
what can you expect from the police department?
When the SWAT team or the police department come in their focus
is to eliminate the threat.
They're gonna move past people that are wounded.
They're not going to be very nice to you because they don't
know if you're on the good side or the bad side.
Follow their directions, keep your hands visible to them,
don't expect at home answer a lot of questions.
Tell them information, answer their questions.
They are there to try and eliminate the threat and they'll
come back to you after the threat and be nice but right now
they're - everybody's under a lot of pressure and a lot of
tenseness to be able to move forward to get rid of that
threat.
How do we cope?
We use -- most of us will turn to our mental health and
counseling centers to try and get people to grief counsel and
to help us advise us in terms of what actions we can take.
But I would tell you when you're in this situation you've got to
cope with it as best you can, remain silent, remain calm,
keep under control and make certain that you always have a
plan in terms of what you're going to do to survive those 5
to 15 minutes.
I mention several times what to do and know what to do in the
event of a Lockdown or Shelter In Place.
Those terms are not synonymous, we don't use those terms at the
same time.
Shelter In Place we use for weather events or perhaps a
biological event and everybody says biological,
you're talking about some kind of chemical attack we have a
highway called Interstate 35 that runs right through the
middle of campus.
Everyday there's trucks with chemicals on those roads that
could end up causing some type of biological or chemical action
that we have to react to, but for a Shelter In Place move to
the lowest part of the building, get in the center of the
hallway, get the away from glass, get away from windows,
and wait instructions.
Lockdown when we announce that the campus is in Lockdown we're
talking about locking down buildings.
I'll give you three different scenarios.
If you're outside move to a building,
if you're inside a building where a shooting or some type of
emergency is going on, if you can tell,
get out then follow the five outs and if you're in a building
that is next to or adjacent to a facility,
lock the doors and stay away from windows,
and you can see on this slide it's a slide that you can go to
and you can download from the Emergency Preparedness Website
and it will tell you what these emergency terms mean but also is
has the five outs make for good posters to print out and put in
your classroom or in your office.
We've taken a lot of time here to go over the emergency
procedures at the University of Texas.
We've talked about the history, we've talked about the programs,
we've talked about the planning and the plans that we've have,
we've talked about the communications,
and we've talked about responsibility.
I hope that this video helps each of you prepare yourself and
prepare your office and classes for a safe time at the
University of Texas.
Thank you very much for viewing these presentations on the
Campus Safety and Security System at the University of
Texas.
If you have any questions please contact me at bharkins
h-a-r-k-i-n-s @austin.utexas.edu.
Thank you again for helping us make the campus safe and secure.