Carson Bonner, Campus Carrier deputy news editor

Starting in Spring 2023, Berry will be holding active shooter awareness sessions, where students will learn how to respond in the event of an active shooter. In a time where active shooters are becoming more prevalent on school and university campuses, it has become more important for educational institutions to take precautions to try and prevent these events as well as put protocol in place for if a shooting were to occur. Protocol may vary campus to campus, so having the knowledge of how to respond in the event of an active shooter is important.

For Berry specifically, safety protocols in the event of an active shooter include contacting the Welcome Center at 706-236-2262, who will dispatch Berry Police to the location of the shooting. While calling the Berry Police Department (BPD) is an option, they will have to then contact the Welcome Center for dispatch, creating a delay in response time.

“We want students to have time on their sides,” Assistant Vice President of Campus Safety and Land Management Gary Will said. “Getting to the Welcome Center first will have a much faster response, which in situations like this, can be the difference between life or death. We don’t want students to engage with someone with a firearm. We want them to contact someone who can intervene.”

According to Will, when Berry Police get word of there being someone on campus either carrying a gun or actively engaging in a shooting, they will respond with the primary objective of eliminating a threat. 

“In the meantime, everyone else will be responding,” Will said. “We’ll get support from Georgia State Patrol, who has a barracks up the road, Rome City Police Department, the SWAT team will be rolling. All of those things will be happening, but the initial response movement will be from Berry Police.” 

Something that is emphasized in active shooter training is timing. A local SWAT team takes an hour to arrive on campus. Historically, the plan before Columbine, a school shooting perpetrated in 1999, was for schools to go into lockdown and wait for SWAT to arrive. The problem with locking down a school is that while an active shooter can’t get out of the building, neither can students who may be in harm’s way.

“That hour gives a shooter that much time to do more damage,” Will said. “So Columbine is really what changed that. Once someone’s called the welcome center, the next thing that would happen would be for a Berry Alert to go off.” 

Berry Alert is the primary method of safety communication. Using Berry Alert, there can be campus wide notification of emergencies, inclement weather, college closing information and alerts of an active shooter. In the case of a shooting, Berry Alert would notify students that there was an active shooter, name the building that the incident is occuring in and instruct them to run if they can, hide if they are not able to leave, and fight if they cannot do either of the previous actions. It will then alert students when there is no longer a threat.

“Having campus-wide communication and having a singular narrative being shared throughout an incident like that is the most important thing,” Will said. “If the narrative is inconsistent, people who could be escaping danger may be putting themselves in more danger just because they don’t know where to go.” 

Methods of prevention are as vital as knowledge of response. According to a report done by Voice of America News, all university shooters had a history of untreated mental illness and were suicidal before or during the shootings. The majority also experienced childhood trauma and had criminal records.  Making resources available and easily accessible, as well as destigmatizing mental illness are both necessary for the prevention of potential violence. According to Melissa DuPont-Reyes in the Journal of School Health, when students feel safe seeking help to better their mental health, they are less likely to commit acts of violence against their peers. 

“Making sure students know they have help available is so important,” Will said. “When there aren’t resources available, or when students don’t know that they have them, then they tend to isolate and that’s when mental health worsens. That’s when risk increases for someone to be a danger to themselves or others and we want to prevent anyone from reaching that point.” 

BPD will be starting their awareness sessions next semester after a two year hiatus due to COVID-19. To express interest in attendance, or to request more information, contact Gary Will at gwill@vikings.berry.edu.