UTC students, officials discuss campus safety

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF) – UTC students lucked out Wednesday when an active shooter situation ended up being no real threat.

The situation led to the evacuation of Fletcher Hall, but left many wondering if more should’ve been done.

“Everything seemed a little disorganized from what I heard. I had roommates. I had a roommate in Fletcher who described the evacuation as kind of chaotic. They weren’t really guided on where to go,” Student Nicole Messer said.

Over 100 people came to the University Center Tuesday for a forum with the Chancellor and his team to address campus safety moving forward.

It was to tackle issues that happened in the situation, like delayed UTC alerts.

That was the problem student Gerald Johnston experienced.

He said he found out what was going on through a friend before the alert came out on his phone.

“I have confidence in our leadership on campus. They’ll, they’ll take what they hear here seriously and they’ll take the steps necessary to change,” Johnston said.

Student Justin Godfrey said he wasn’t signed up for the alerts and wondered if there was a way to reach people by phone regardless of the alerts.

Officials said they’re going to push to get people signed up.

They’re also working to be able to put messages on computers logged on to the university system, but do not have one way to directly contact all students.

“It is interesting to learn that they don’t have a technical way to contact everybody when it’s a, if there was a really serious emergency,” Godfrey said.

Finance and Administration Executive Vice Chancellor Dr. Richard Brown said what went right is the response by authorities to mitigate any threat.

What they are doing is looking at making changes to policy.

“Even with a vague threat given where the nation is today you almost literally have to shut the campus down so we’re changing our policy to make sure that we do a campus shutdown as quickly as we can,” Godfrey said.

They’re also working with the head of TEMA to review policies and procedures.