University Runs Drill on Campus Shooting, Forgets to Tell Staff Its a Drill

Imagine you are sitting in your college class, just eight days after the Northern Illinois University shooting, when the following happens:

An armed man who burst into a classroom at Elizabeth City State University was role-playing in an emergency response drill, but neither the students nor assistant professor Jingbin Wang knew that.“I was prepared to die at that moment,” Wang said Tuesday.

I would think so. It would be terrifying. Now consider this: The man was a campus security officer, and the drill was planned by the university, but they didn’t tell the class or the class’s teacher about it.

The Friday drill, in which a mock gunman threatened panicked students in the American foreign policy class with death, prompted university officials to apologize this week to Wang and offer counseling to faculty and students.

Anthony Brown, vice chancellor for student affairs, said the university was testing its response to shootings of the sort that have shaken campuses around the country. “The intent was not to frighten them but to test our system and also to test the response of the security that was on campus and the people that were notified,” Brown said.

Good job running drills on this kind of thing, but come on. How could you not inform the class and the teacher? That seems like something that is kind of hard to forget.

It sounds like a good drill.

The intruder instructed Wang to close the door and then ordered the seven students to line up along the wall. Wang said the man told them that he had been kicked out of school and that he needed a lung transplant.

At one point, Wang said, the man threatened to kill the student who had the lowest grade point average. Wang offered to let him sit in his class, he said, but the man rejected attempts at negotiation.

Wang said some students thought the gun was fake, but they were not sure. “I was the guy who was feeling the gun on my back,” he said.

After about 10 minutes, the class heard people talking outside the door, and campus police rushed in and subdued the man.

But Wang said, “Even after this was over, nobody explained it.” Nobody explained it to the other classes either. Students in other classes barricaded themselves in classrooms and were ready to jump out of windows to get away. Some were texting their parents.

How do you set something like this up and not tell those involved that it is going to happen?