2008 Woodie Awards
Security plan under reform
Jena Hippensteel
Issue date: 12/5/07 Section: News
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Vestavia Hills High School found graffiti in several bathrooms which threatened a shooting on Oct. 31.
Last month at the University of Montevallo, a woman brandished a gun in Brooke Residence Hall, according to MSNBC. No shots were fired, but the campus quickly went into a lockdown.
Ever since the Virginia Tech shooting, Samford's has been working to update its system for an active shooter.
Director of Campus Safety Bobby Breed agrees that the systems are outdated and wants to have a better layout plan for students and teachers to follow in times of panic.
"The Virginia Tech incident changed focus on the way we do security," Breed said. "It is a tedious process that's been a work in progress for the past six months. Homewood Police Department has security plans with Homewood area high schools, and we're using those as a basis for our plan."
One Homewood school is John Caroll Catholic High School.
Principal David Chauvette has created an elaborate security plan.
Features include keyless entries to all the buildings, where only staff has access to electronic key cards. Also, Several buildings have buzzer systems for restrictive access.
If an active shooter were on school property, teachers would be notified over the intercom system and would have the rooms locked down within 30 seconds.
Eight members on the administration are qualified to check on the lockdown status with the use of walkie-talkies and special jackets to identify themselves.
"They're quite gaudy actually. But they're made to differentiate us from the shooter," Chauvette said. "Soon we're beginning a contract with a company to test our procedure and assist with more training (for emergency situations)."
"We don't want to have teachers panic. We want them to know up front how to act in an emergency, so we want as wide a range of communication as possible," Chauvette said.