Lockdown
At 10:30 a.m. this morning, all campuses of Broward Community College were evacuated and locked down. The first message said that general threats were made against the college, and a decision was made to close all college locations, which are spread out all over Broward County, FL. Fridays are probably the easiest days to deal with something like this as we have few classes and fewer students and faculty on the campuses. I didn't actually get the word until one of our safety people saw me in the magazine office and asked me if I knew what was going on. He locked me in, and I proceeded to turn off computers, gather papers, and leave. The entrances had not been blocked yet, but people were being turned around after they got on campus. Some students needed to be picked up, and some needed the bus to come on campus to let them leave. Everything was much more orderly than the last one we had, which was uncontrolled chaos. We had just met on campus to discuss campus safety, particularly communication, in light of what happened at Virginia Tech. The State of Florida is apparently allocating much money to improve safety on all 28 communty college and 11 state university campuses. All of our campuses, with thousands of students (BCC has some 50,000), are highly-vulnerable because of their openness and easy acccessibility. By state law, community colleges are not allowed to have an armed police force like our universities do. The debate on that, even during this past week, has been great. Our campus safety people have to maintain order as first providers with little support and no firepower. We do have a campus resource officer from the local police department, who often does a good job watching the parking lot from his car, which doesn't really provide a police presence. VT did have an armed police force, but it didn't seem to help though that could have been the result of early decisions not to secure the campus after the first murders. The debate about guns will continue in America. Is taking away all guns the answer? No. Is giving everyone a gun the answer? My friend, Ric, who knows more about weapons than anyone I know (and if armegeddon broke out, I'd want to be cowering behind him for safety) says that an armed society is a polite society. He also says that countries that have put in the most restrictions on guns have had the greatest rise in crimes with them. One person making comments on Andy Carvin's weblog about communication at VT said that select staff and faculty should be trained and then armed on campuses. Wow. What environment would that create? I guess students would be more polite in class. I know that Jeb Bush's "shoot on sight" policy (that's not really what it was called) has made me more polite as a driver. I would never storm up to the window of a car after the idiot driver cut me off as he (or she) might be armed and blow me away. "Really, ladies and gentlemen on the jury. Look at the size of that bruiser. Wouldn't you fear for your life if he had been running up to your car?"
Anyway, the Hollywood Police think they may have a suspect in custody that may have made the threats. Supposedly, he had promised results worse than Virginia Tech. He may also have threatened chaos at a local middle school, Attucks, where he was said to be going to get the rich and white people there. The suspect looks like an older Black man. Ironically, the only rich white person at Attucks is the principal. And, given that this is Florida education, I'm probably wrong about the rich part.
Speaking of guns, Brian Williams gave Hillary Clinton the perfect chance to call for banning assault weapons again, and she didn't even swing at it. Joe Biden scored a solid hit by reminding us of the ban which was brought about during the Clinton administration and allowed to expire during Bush's reign. I am still in Hillary's camp, but Biden and the little guy from Ohio impressed me greatly. It will be an interesting campaign season.
Are you ready yet, Al?
posted by Patrick Ellingham @ 2:53 PM
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