RIVERSIDE CITY COLLEGE
Emergency on campus VIEWPOINTSONLINE.ORG
APRIL 27, 2023
VOL. 101, NO. 12
EDITORIAL: Crisis response lacks sense of urgency
R
iverside City College students received a text message at 9:36 a.m. April 10 of a situation happening on campus, telling students to immediately shelter in place. Specifics were not given. Half the Viewpoints staff was on campus while the others were not. Due to the lack of communication and clarity, we were all left to assume that the incident was extremely dangerous. Hours later, it was confirmed an unhoused man was wandering on campus carrying a knife. No one was injured. It would take a full hour longer before the campus alert system let the students know that this was not an active shooter situation, something that many were assuming at the time. Students who were in class when the incident started were locked inside for more than two hours while the situation unfolded in the northwest corner of campus near the Child Development Center & Learning Laboratory. Classes were being canceled by professors who were seemingly just as much in the dark as the students were. Again many who were left locked in the classrooms still assumed it could be an active shooting situation. Due to the national climate those students were preparing for the worst scenario possible. We have expressed our concerns before about the reliability of safety protocols and communication with all Riverside Police force and school officials. Here we are again worried about what our school will or won’t do to protect us. A 2016 shooting at White Park, which is located across the street from the Riverside Community College District offices, took over an hour and a half to be
STEPHEN DAY | VIEWPOINTS
Police and EMT station themselves at the entrance to the lawn area in front of the Riverside City College Child Development Center where a suspect armed with a knife is hiding in the storm drain. The incident caused the college to shut down for nearly 3 hours.
Some question District’s tactics JENNIPHER VASQUEZ EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Riverside City College’s safety protocols were brought into question after an incident caused a campus-wide shutdown. An alert from the college was sent to students by the Riverside Community College District following reports to the campus police of a man walking around the college with a knife in hand April 18. The man was detained near the RCC Early Childhood Development Center nearly three hours after the initial alert was sent. RAVE alert system is utilized by the District to alert those who are opted-in for the notifications of any possible security threats and allows users to report incidents and crimes through the app. According to faculty from the See SAFETY on page 7 Children’s Center, alerts being
2
NEWS
Medieval Times knights cite horse abuse, employee mistreatment and ignorance
received were not aligning with what they were able to see through their office windows. ECDC faculty member Emily Philippsen said she is grateful for the immediate response from authorities but there is a need to improve communication. “From our perspective down here, the RAVE messages were not matching what we were seeing from our windows, which was 40 police officers with their guns drawn for over two hours,” Philippsen said. She said that there was not much information given aside from the campus-wide alerts. “We knew it was not an active shooter, we just didn’t know that people would think it was an active shooter,” Beiwei Tu, Director of Risk Management and system administrator for RAVE alerts said. Tu said they did not send the alert clarifying that the situation
6
was not an active shooter situation until after the District’s strategic communications learned there was discussion on social media about a possible active shooter on campus. Following the incident Philippsen described in an email addressed to the RCC community what the shelter in place order was like with children present and not knowing whether or not there was an active shooter present. The initial alert sent at 9:36 a.m. read: “RCCD Urgent Alert: There has been an incident at Riverside City College, please shelter in place. More information to follow.” Over an hour passed before another alert was sent out stating that it was not an active shooter and that police were, “engaged.” “Even one of our teachers recognized the innocent danger of children having light up shoes in the
OPINION
Despite mission statement, Starbucks fails to keep their promise
dark during lockdown,” Philippsen’s email stated. “Often, our little corner of the college is forgotten down here. Until yesterday, when we were front and center on the news for all the wrong reasons.” Dean of Instruction of Career and Technical Education Shari Yates was in contact with faculty at the Children’s Center during the lockdown according to Philippsen. Yates said that teachers and some faculty from the center who were present the day of the incident have taken advantage of counseling offered by the college. “I want faculty, students, administrators and everyone to know that there’s this resource on campus of a mental health professional that can support them when an issue arises,” Yates said. “It’s nice to have someone who can give some extra resources and maybe de-escalate any kind of situation.”
INDEX
NEWS LIFE EDITORIAL SPORTS
2 4 7 8