KENT — What started as a simple e-mail response to one of KSU President Lester Lefton’s weekly messages ended up as an interview with Eastern Flash last Friday in the president’s office. The topic was campus safety and to what extent the Kent campus is involved in safety issues at the regional campuses.
“The biggest issues that Americans face in society is that we live in an open society and anyone can get guns,” Lefton said. “Short of getting police officers for every classroom on every floor in every building, there isn’t a lot we can do as far as shootings are concerned.”An unlikely alternative might be metal detectors at each door with someone waiting to frisk us as soon as we enter. In the event that a mentally unstable person should decide to take justice into his/her own hands, “The Kent campus police are specially trained to detect mental illness,” Lefton noted.
So where does that leave the regional campuses? According to the president, it is up to each individual campus to provide its own site-specific emergency and evacuation plan.
To that end the East Liverpool campus recently formed a safety and security committee that includes some of our finest staff from many different departments to evaluate these issues and make student safety a primary concern. Lynette Rawlings, head of the Justice Studies program, chairs the committee.
Before the end of this month there will be a number of changes taking place at the East Liverpool campus. One change already has been implemented: Students and staff can now dial 911 from any phone on campus. Also students soon will be able to click a link on our campus home page to review the site-specific emergency plans. These will cover what to do in case of a fire, tornado, violent incident or any other emergency on our campus.
In Lefton’s March 7 weekly “in-a-flash” e-mail message to faculty, staff, and students, he wrote, “I continue to enjoy reading responses to these weekly messages, including many that share examples of Kent State excellence in action. I've received a number of thoughtful responses to the opinion piece I wrote as a result of the recent shootings at Northern Illinois University and Virginia Tech. ... One reinforced my point that each of us has a responsibility to notify proper authorities if we observe someone who is acting erratically and/or has a weapon. The fastest and easiest way to do so is by dialing 911."
President Lefton had a few words of advice to our safety and security committee: “Communicate very well what you are doing,” he said. “Notify and make clear how emergency response works. Never forget you cannot communicate too much.”
