Lockdown during Class Time

Finally something on a local news site about a major disruption at the entire campus where I work:

http://www.komonews.com/news/38408349.html



The long and short of it is we had a campus-wide lockdown when a man robbed the on-campus U.S. Bank branch and fled on foot. This happened about 10:30am according to the article and the lockdown took part in stages: sometime around 10:45 the emergency coordinator in each building was notified, and at 11:04 a campus-wide email was sent notifying everyone of the lockdown.



The catch was that class let out at 10:50 and started at 11:00. Put those two things together and you have a situation where security was locking doors as students were walking from class to class. The strict lockdown rule of no-one in, no-one out meant hundreds of students were locked outside of the buildings. I don't think they felt safe.



Thankfully a few exceptions to the rule were made. A student saw me and several others standing in the lobby of our class building and let us in. Then the emergency coordinator saw us inside the building, outside of the classroom, and told us to go to our classroom. Through the door that was supposed to remain locked under all circumstances, but it was the only move that made sense at the time. It was a little uncomfortable having two classes in the same room (probably a fire code violation!). But the lockdown was mercifully short, probably because the robber was long gone, and by about 20 after the coordinator let us go on with life.



All in all, it worked out OK. I think the coordinators should be given the duty to usher large groups of students into classrooms. Ours did a good job of that, at least.



I think my six-year-old will be excited to know about my day for once. Or not!



(Can college students help in the CSI-type investigation? Please please please?)