By SHANNON O. WELLS
Following a series of recent campus disruptions, including two hoax shooter calls and an April 18 incident in which an “incendiary device” was deployed during a protest of a transgender-related forum at O’Hara Student Center, Chancellor Patrick Gallagher’s report to Senate Council on April 20 focused largely on campus safety concerns.
“The campus and the region have been shocked a number of times through a number of events that have tested us from an emergency preparedness- and emergency-response perspective,” he said. “My philosophy on this is that any time something like that happens, (there’s first) the incident itself, but you always get reflective afterwards because (responses are) never perfectly executed. And they're always a teachable moment. And we have to look at what we did critically to see what worked and what didn't work.
“We are doing that. The community has been correctly holding us accountable for doing that and providing a lot of input,” Gallagher added, praising “faculty, our staff, and especially our students.”
While the academic semester may be winding down, he said enhanced emergency preparations will be developed this spring and summer for implementation during the 2023-24 academic term. “Expect to see a real surge of training and awareness as some of these improvements are rolled out.”
The meeting was Gallagher’s first Senate Council appearance since an April 10 incident in which City of Pittsburgh Police received a call for an “active shooter incident” at Hillman Library and another hoax shooter incident on March 29 at nearby Central Catholic High School, to which Pitt Police also responded.
Though a hoax, the Hillman incident caused confusion and concern during the response, which included a city officer who discharged his weapon into a glass door in a construction area. No one was injured, but a flawed Emergency Notification System (ENS) process has led to a review of systems and retraining communicators.
Not going away
Although he doesn’t believe everyone involved is affiliated with Pitt, Gallagher said the campus disruptions are perpetrated by those seeking to “exploit the fear caused by mass-shooting events that are happening around the country.”
“There are far too many of these,” he said. “And we've seen a pattern on several occasions where a major event somewhere else in the country is immediately followed by fake events where false alarms are called in. I don't think we should mince words: These are not prank calls. These are terrorist attacks. And they're using disinformation to create fear and trauma” and create “an immediate police response.”
Gallagher emphasized that hoax calls bring about the same police and public safety responses — and public alarm — as real incidents. “And it’s terrifying, and it's also dangerous. The bad news, the sad news is, I don't think these events are going away. I think we have entered an environment where these kinds of things are going to continue to happen,” he said.
“They are not unique to Pitt or Pittsburgh or to Western Pennsylvania. They're happening across the country. … They're not confined to higher ed. They're happening in K through 12 and other kinds of institutions.”
Gallagher lauded improvements in the public safety response to the April 18 protests during a transgender-rights debate between Daily Wire host Michael Knowles and libertarian journalist Brad Polumbo at O’Hara Student Center.
More than 250 people protested outside the center when a “loud explosive sound” echoed across campus, Pitt News reported. Pitt spokesperson Jared Stonesifer confirmed the sound was a smoke bomb, and police said the explosive was a combination of a firework and smoke bomb. No injuries were reported.
“With the civil unrest issue that we had this week, the information flow was dramatically different,” Gallagher said at Senate Council. “And that is a credit to the team that's been working hard to basically reposition.”
Gallagher condemned the actions of some demonstrators who he said abused their free-speech privileges. “Let me just be unambiguous: That is an absolutely unacceptable outcome that we saw here.
“Freedom of speech does not mean you get to throw explosive devices at anyone, including responding police officers,” he noted. “It does not mean you get to disrupt and light fires and close roads and deter patients from hospitals and all the other nonsense that we saw Tuesday night.”
‘We must do better’
Door security, including egress and locking; police procedures, training and staffing; and emergency preparation are all being examined in the wake of recent incidents.
“The thing we most train for as individuals is how to get out of the building in the context of a fire. We're going to have to learn other things as well to be prepared,” he said, noting expanded emergency preparedness training based on individual responsibilities will apply to various Pitt schools and programs, and ultimately “to everybody here, because we all use the whole campus.”
“My message to you today is that, as happy as I am that nobody got hurt, we can't actually look at it this way. We have to look at this as we are entering a more dangerous and threatening time with these kinds of things happening,” he said. “And the best way to address the … sense of powerlessness and loss of agency that contributes to the fear and trauma is to wrap our arms around it and educate ourselves and address this.”
Noting that disruptions, both real and hoax-based, could happen “anywhere, anytime,” Gallagher said the University community is obligated to “become increasingly aware (and) develop that vocabulary” as a collective response he compared to the beginning of the COVID pandemic in 2020.
“How do we talk about this? What does it mean? What are the approaches? What steps can we take so that we all have the awareness?” he asked. “So, again, we have a lot of work to do.”
Kenyon Bonner, vice provost for Student Affairs, thanked Pitt Police and Department of Public Safety “for supporting all three events,” particularly on April 18. “I agree with you there's a lot of work to do,” Bonner said. “I do commend the people who showed up with the intent to be peaceful and were peaceful, exercising their rights, but there were definitely people in that group that had ill intention and could have hurt a lot of people.”
Senate Council President Robin Kear thanked Pitt Police Chief Jim Loftus and Ted Fritz, vice chancellor of public safety and emergency management, for their “dedicated and ongoing work and attentive response to the criticism and the recognition of needed improvements.” She also praised the seriousness with which the administration is taking “required improvements to the ENS system, preparation strategies and classroom security.”
“We have been pretty much talking about nothing else for the past week among the officers and with administration,” she said. “As I heard at the students’ Town Hall on Monday evening, we must do better for our students. These have been traumatic events for many of us,” she said, noting the improvements in ENS and information-sharing responses during the April 18 protest. “So, that was positive.”
Echoing words from Student Government Board President Danielle Floyd at the Town Hall, Kear said the incidents are related to the “prevalence of gun violence in America” that is “impacting all of our lives. And some of us are impacted disproportionately by gun violence. And we must do what we can to make that better for all.”
Taking HEART
In her report to Senate Council, Staff Council President Lindsay Rodzwicz said council has listened to staff concerns and is “bringing them forward through our shared governance channels, specifically the Senate CUPS (Campus Utilization, Planning and Safety) committee (and) the Public Safety Advisory Council,” she said, also praising efforts to improve ENS during the April 18 disruptions.
Rodzwicz encouraged staff to utilize campus resources, including participating in the active killer training with Pitt Police. “Staff Council has been a longtime partner with the police on making sure that our community is aware of those trainings,” she said.
“We want to encourage our faculty and staff (and) point people to LifeSolutions who have those concerns that can be addressed through those channels. And we continue to guide the students that our staff support to the University Counseling Center.”
Rodzwicz lauded the “great spotlight” Staff Council participated in featuring the Pittsburgh Higher Education Assessment and Response Team (HEART) and Pitt Police Chief James Loftus. She wants to make sure people know of “this really great service that provides an immediate response with the police for welfare checks for members of our student community to support students in distress,” she said.
Related to the recent series of controversial, transgender-oriented speaker forums, Rodzwicz said the newly adopted Staff Council statement supporting Pitt’s LGBTQIA-plus community is posted on Council’s website. “It passed by an overwhelming majority. And we just wanted to continue to reiterate our commitment to recognizing the intersecting identities of our members as well as members of the Pitt community and that we stand in support of our LGBTQIA+ community.”
Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.
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