Sound the Alarm

On February 20^th siren alarms sounded throughout the Plymouth State campus, as they always do every third week of the semester, but this time it was different. The sirens were part of an emergency drill that effectively kept the campus on a practice lockdown from 12 p.m. to 12:05 p.m.

Some students in the HUB sat patiently, others moaned with indignation, and some, despite heavy campus communication prior to the event, simply had no idea what was going on.

"We sent out two flagged campus e-mails and one this morning [2/20], there was a posting in the paper [The Clock]," said Timonthy Kershner, Chief Public Relations Officer, adding, "we did our due diligence."

Kershner oversees sending out all PSU alerts, anything from siren drills to snow days. He said, "Any thing we send out rises to the level of 'you need to read this.'"

Kershner continued, "There are always people who did not get information, or even chose not to participate, but overall we had a very good response."

A combination of UPD, volunteers, and parking officers were across campus facilitating the drill, staged at specific locations to direct students and faculty into buildings or answer any questions.

UPD Officer Jennifer Frank, PSU's Emergerency Planning Manager, was pleased with the pre-drill communication and how the drill played out, "there were a lot of various social media sites, e-mail, and posters, that said 'we're going to have the siren, here's what were going to do.'" Before the drill, Officer Frank went to 30 different departments to make sure the campus was well prepared.

"Any time something is new, and you're trying to push it out to a body of 8,000 people, there's always going to be some people who are either not going to get the message or not understand it," said Officer Frank.

Both Officer Frank and Kershner hope the bi-yearly drill will become as natural to PSU as any other siren test. "The goal of this, in essence, wasn't to have a perfect response, the goal was to help people have an increase concern for their safety. I don't mean that because it's a dangerous environment, sometimes we have a tendency not to think about safety issues until we are faced with an issue," said Officer Frank.

During the drill, one professor couldn't lock his door and didn't know what to do. "How do we fix that?," Officer Frank asked, adding, "This drill, in a way, is designed to create more questions than answers. That's kind of the point of the drill, find the holes and fill them."

Emergency drills will now take place twice a year. The next siren test and drill will happen the third Wednesday in September.

The lockdown isn't the only change of procedure at Plymouth, even fire drills were done different this year. "We had somebody stand in the center stair well, and say 'I'm a fire, find a different location,'" said Officer Frank, "which seems silly at first, but it actually required people to start thinking, 'what would I use for a different exit?'"