- Some UVU students are upset over how the school handled active shooter notifications.
- Students say the university sent out conflicting messages about a campus lockdown.
- One student launched an online petition seeking stricter policies to keep campus safe.
Some Utah Valley University students are questioning the school’s protocol for student and faculty protection in an active shooter situation after the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on campus Wednesday.
“I didn’t feel safe at all. It was a complete nightmare,” said Ava Beck, adding she was “beyond disappointed” at the university’s response.
“Us students at UVU felt unsafe in the way the events were handled today, and we are begging for stricter lockdown policies to be put in place to ensure that nothing like this happens again in the future,” she wrote in an email.
Kirk was sitting under a pop-up tent at the bottom of a tiered courtyard when a gunshot from long range hit him in the neck. He died at a nearby hospital. The shot sent the estimated crowd of 3,000 people scattering for cover. No other shots were fired, authorities said.
The shot was fired from the top of the Losee Center, a central campus building about 200 to 300 yards east of the amphitheater where Kirk was speaking, UVU officials said. Video taken before and after the shooting show a person on the roof of the building that officials identified as the shooter’s location.
On Thursday, the university declined to comment on concerns students have raised about campus safety protocols.
UVU spokesperson Ellen Treanor said in a text message that there are certain things the university isn’t talking about because of the investigation by the FBI and other law enforcement. She sent a link to the campus police department website, where the school’s seven-page emergency communication plan can be found.
School administrators have closed the campus until Sept. 15.
‘People didn’t know what to do’
Beck was in Spanish class in the Clarke Building on the north end of campus when two male students came in and told them there was an incident at the Kirk event. She estimated that happened about five minutes after the 12:20 p.m. shooting.
“After Charlie Kirk was shot, there was no PA announcement regarding a lockdown. Students, faculty and visitors were fleeing the building instead of being under lockdown in classrooms and buildings,” she said.
Beck said that as she left the building she saw students, faculty and visitors standing around in the parking lot as well as in front of the library instead of being under lockdown.
“There was an active shooter and people didn’t know what to do,” she told the Deseret News. “The way that the lockdown was handled, if the shooter did decide to shoot upon the crowd, it could have been way deadlier.”
Many students, she said, started to run or walk to their cars to leave, clogging entrances and exits for police and other emergency vehicles to get onto campus.
Chelsea Heslington, who is the lead designer for the athletics design team, was with other designers when students started pouring into their office space, looking for a safe place to be.
Those new arrivals said there was an active shooter on campus, “which is really scary,” she said, adding she went to the front of the office and they were trying to figure out if they should lock the door, but decided not to in case others tried to escape danger in their office, “until we got instructions on a lockdown.”
Heslington estimated it was about an hour before they were evacuated by law enforcement.
It’s possible school and other officials knew the active danger had passed, but those hunkered down where she was, or in the bookstore where her mother works and had locked herself in with others fleeing the chaos, did not know that.
“We didn’t really know what was going on, so we were just doing our best to handle what was current in our situation,” she said.
Contradictory and confusing messages
The first notification students received about the shooting came via email at 12:44 p.m., about 20 minutes after Kirk was shot. It read: “UVU Alert: A single shot was fired on campus toward a visiting speaker. Police are investigating now, suspect in custody. For more info go to UVU.edu.”
The message wasn’t accurate. While police were holding a person of interest, they determined fairly quickly that he wasn’t the shooter. New reports then surfaced, saying there wasn’t a person in custody. Beck said that left people confused on what was happening and not receiving any immediate warning from the university while there was a shooter on the loose.
The school sent another alert at 1:11 p.m., advising students that campus would be closed and those on campus should follow police directions.
“After that, the university sent out multiple different emails all at different times, which included a lot of contradictory and confusing information,” according to Beck.
Beck launched a Change.org petition, calling for UVU to create better lockdown procedures.
One dad, who didn’t want his name used, said he was concerned about his son’s safety. Although it wasn’t a mass shooting, he told the Deseret News, “my feeling was the response should be exactly the same. If there was a guy on campus with a gun, it should be locked down. My son’s instructor didn’t get notified until at least 22 to 32 minutes after the shooting happened.”
He said he was also told by an instructor that at least some instructors were never offered training for an active shooting situation.
Dark figure on the roof
Raul Pizano didn’t hear the shot from where he was in the Sparks Automotive Building, but he heard sirens wailing outside. A lot of students in class then immediately got cellphone messages asking if they were safe, had they heard what happened, what’s going on.
The university initially sent an alert advising faculty and students to shelter in place, followed 10 or 15 minutes later with a message to professors saying the shelter in place was lifted and students could go to their next class or go home, he said.
Other alerts came over the next hour, of which Pizano said, “some of them were kind of clear but every now and again they did get a bit confusing.” He called them “scattered,” with some coming too early or too late.
Pizano said he never felt unsafe but a little anxiety did creep in.
Because he didn’t have a car that day, Pizano said he started walking away from campus after the shooting. As he did, he was getting messages from his family wondering if he was OK. He stopped to take pictures of the courtyard where Kirk spoke and text them to his family to show that he was safe. As he looked through the photos he’d taken that day, he said he noticed a shadowy figure standing on the roof of the Losee Center.