By Ashley Horton-Duran
Daytona State College hosted its annual Campus Safety Awareness Day, providing lectures on how to stay secure and honoring local police officers.
“Traditionally in April, campuses across the country meet and do some type of safety awareness. It is the anniversary of Virginia Tech and it is the anniversary of Columbine. We choose this time of year for number one to remember those tragic victims and number two try to make ourselves better at not having that happen again,” Bill Tillard, Director of Campus Safety said.
Over the last decade, shootings on college campuses have caught the nation’s attention. The killing of 32 students at Virginia Tech has been an eye-opener to lack of safety on campuses.
“Here on campus we are extremely proactive, extremely visible, we’re high profile and high energy. The college’s partnership with law enforcement agencies is extremely important. We are Class D security, we don’t carry guns or anything like that so we need to be able to rely on calling the police and getting them here quickly,” Tillard said.
During the drill, an armed gunman, who is really an instructor, entered the credit union where a secretary reported seeing a weapon. Police officers came a detained the gunman. Andre Ruddock from Campus Watch explained that “If a student sees something happening that they should report it and they can even make an anonymous call. Students really shouldn’t bite their tongue for anything because you never know what can happen.”
Bill Tillard clarified that the duty of campus safety is to ensure that the entire college community, faculty, students and the visitors are prepared to respond in an emergency. He also stated that the event is a way for campus safety to test their ability to respond to all hazards, not only violent crime, but hurricanes or hazmat situations as well.
“I am very pleased that our college community is responsive. They come forward, they ask, they report, they are prepared and we feel like preparation is very much the key, Tillard said. I hope that we never have a tragedy here, I hope we never have a violent incident, I hope nobody ever steals a pencil but in the real world these things happen sometimes and it’s my job, it’s my staff’s job and it’s the college’s job to keep people informed and prepared.”