Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4 — Thursday, March 21, 2019

Zack Blumberg
Emma Chang
Joel Danilewitz
Emily Huhman
Tara Jayaram

Jeremy Kaplan
Magdalena Mihaylova
Ellery Rosenzweig
Jason Rowland
Anu Roy-Chaudhury

Alex Satola
Timothy Spurlin
Nicholas Tomaino
Erin White 
Ashley Zhang

FINNTAN STORER
Managing Editor

Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building
420 Maynard St. 
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.

MAYA GOLDMAN
Editor in Chief
MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA 
AND JOEL DANILEWITZ
Editorial Page Editors

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of The Daily’s Editorial Board. 
All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

Our University was deeply 
affected by the traumatizing 
event of having a believed 
shooter on campus. While 
this was thankfully proven 
to be a false alarm, the stress, 
fear and harm inflicted on 
students 
remains 
tangibly 
real 
and 
potent. 
One 
of 
the 
fundamental 
reasons 
that this stress has been 
so pervasive lies with the 
University’s 
inadequate 
response to the alarm – 
particularly in its unclear 
and sporadic communication 
with students before and 
after 
the 
incident. 
This 
past weekend’s events were 
an alarming wake up call. 
We as an Editorial Board 
urge 
the 
University 
to 
take 
this 
opportunity 
to 
implement concrete change 
to 
their 
active 
shooter 
preparedness and procedure, 
in collaboration with student 
organizations to create the 
most 
effective 
protocol 
possible.
After 
an 
emergency, 
students look toward the 
University 
for 
leadership 
and guidance on how to 
effectively 
move 
forward. 
We implore the University 
to create a space for open 
dialogue 
for 
students 
to 
directly 
express 
their 
concerns about the current 
active shooter protocol as well 
as suggest amendments to the 
way the University handles 
emergency 
situations. 
This could be a town hall, 
among other options. This 
will give the University the 
opportunity to hear from and 
acknowledge how different 
communities — specifically 
underrepresented 
communities like the Muslim 
community and people with 
disabilities — are affected, 
and allow these different 
experiences to inform the 
resulting policy.
One of the most glaring 
issues to come from the 
incident was the University’s 
alert system. The system 
failed to notify all students 
of the alarm, either at all or 
in a timely manner, which 
is unacceptable considering 
that the immediate safety of 
the entire community was 
at risk. Students reported 
receiving information from 
their parents before getting 
any notification from the 
University or from social 
media. 
The 
University’s 
first 
alert 
regarding 
the 

unconfirmed reports of an 
active shooter went out at 
5:06 p.m., though many had 
been 
receiving 
texts 
and 
calls from fellow students 
and loved ones for about 30 
minutes beforehand. When 
the alert finally came, not all 
students received it through 
practical 
and 
immediate 
channels 
such 
as 
text 
message or push notification. 
The University should not 
only work to deliver these 
messages in a more timely 
fashion, but also make it 
mandatory for students to 
opt into the emergency text 
system, which is currently 
optional 
and 
accessible 
for students to sign up to 
through Wolverine Access.

It is also important for 
the University to reevaluate 
the type of information they 
are disseminating in these 
alerts, and focus on providing 
accurate, detailed and clear 
information. One of the first 
messages from the University 
simply said “run, hide, fight” 
— the University’s current 
active 
shooter 
protocol 
sponsored by the Department 
of Homeland Security. While 
this protocol may be useful, 
in an emergency situation 
it 
does 
not 
adequately 
provide students with useful 
direction. Furthermore, it 
fails to account for specifics 
of the situation.
Additionally, 
the 
“run, 
hide, 
fight” 
protocol 
is 
something 
that 
needs 
to 
be addressed and retaught 
beyond the video shown at 
orientation. Many students, 
faculty and staff are unaware 
of what exactly this protocol 
entails, which is problematic 
due 
to 
its 
importance. 
Potential solutions to this 
problem could be creating 
a simulation to be shown at 
more regular intervals, either 
during 
syllabus 
week 
or 
through mandatory seminars 
in the mold of “Relationship 
Remix” and “Change it Up.” 

Expanded-upon instruction 
about 
“run, 
hide, 
fight” 
could 
include 
situations 
that 
are 
personalized 
to 
our 
specific 
institution, 
perhaps including building-
by-building 
protocols 
— 
especially 
those 
that 
are 
frequently 
attended 
by 
students and therefore more 
vulnerable 
to 
potential 
emergency situations. This 
information could also be 
featured on course syllabi in 
a similar way that the sexual 
assault and CAPS policies are 
described, giving students 
specific information based 
on the building and room.
It is crucial that the 
University discuss which of 
their channels of information 
is 
most 
reliable 
so 
that 
students and the community 
at large are able to turn to a 
credible source immediately. 
If such a channel is not yet 
established then it is the 
University’s duty to create 
a clear source for reliable 
updates. We also encourage 
the University to collaborate 
with The Michigan Daily 
as a trusted campus news 
organization and resource, 
as we can serve as a direct 
pipeline 
of 
reliable 
and 
immediate information. We 
acknowledge the mistakes 
we made on Saturday, and 
to 
prevent 
anymore 
the 
University 
should 
work 
with us to provide accurate 
updates in the event of an 
emergency.
Due 
to 
the 
lack 
of 
clear 
communication 
via 
emergency 
alerts, 
vague 
vocabulary and instructions 
and no single, clear source 
for updates, students turned 
to police scanners and first-
hand accounts about what 
was happening. This aided 
in the spread of confusion 
and panic. We are incredibly 
fortunate that the alert on 
Saturday was a false alarm, 
but this event must be viewed 
as a learning opportunity for 
the University to improve 
its emergency protocols. It 
is imperative that students, 
faculty and staff have a 
clearer 
understanding 
of 
what to do and where to 
receive information in these 
types of situations. Saturday 
proved there is an urgent 
need to improve University 
policy and protocol, as these 
procedures are essential to 
our campus safety.

B

y 4 p.m., more than 
200 of us arrived at the 
University of Michigan 
Diag for a vigil to mourn the lives 
of those lost in New Zealand, 
organized by the Islamophobia 
Working Group.
At about 4:35 p.m., 20 terrified 
people called 911 from Mason 
Hall, reporting the sound of 
gunshots.
At 4:43 p.m., I sent my loved 
ones a text message that read, 
“I’m okay I love you.”
The truth is I was not ok. I 
was not safe. And I didn’t know if 
this would be the last thing they 
would ever hear from me.
My day started off better than 
most. I attended the Women’s 
March with my mom and friends 
and then arrived at the vigil 
shortly after to support the Ann 
Arbor Muslim community. It 
was supposed to be a day that 
would uplift and unite us. At 
the vigil, a student beautifully 
chanted a verse from the Quran, 
the names of the victims were 
spoken aloud and another student 
began reading a poem. Suddenly 
I heard a man’s voice shouting in 
the distance, I turned my head 
back toward the noise but saw 
nothing and turned back to face 
the poet. I could not hear what 
he said or see the crowd behind 
me from where I was standing in 
the front. Seconds later his voice 
was echoed by screams and cries 
and people all around me were 
running for their lives. It was all a 
blur. It happened so slowly and so 
quickly at the same time.
Over the past year and a 
half, in light of the news of mass 
shootings in this country and 
abroad, I have woken up with 
night terrors where I am in a 
lockdown more times than I can 
count. But my nightmares did 
not prepare me for this. I found 
myself lying on the cement of the 
Diag. It felt like I was drowning 
in the sea of people and I didn’t 
have the strength to get up or the 
ability to see the surface.
I heard two voices, who I 
would later find out were my 
friends, telling me I needed to 
stand up. It sounded like when 
you’re sleeping and someone 
is talking to you and you can’t 
tell if it is in your dream or real 
life. I somehow managed to pull 
myself up; I probably wouldn’t 
have been able to if it were not 
for the encouraging voices. I 
remembered that it was safest to 
run as far away as possible from 
the shooter, but I didn’t have 
the strength to keep running. 
It felt like I was running in slow 
motion. In delirium, I reached for 

the nearest door handle and ran 
inside. I later found out that it was 
the Hatcher Graduate Library.
I don’t even remember how I 
found the staircase that led to “the 
stacks,” bookshelves of archived 
materials and locked office doors. 
There was no room to hide in, no 
door to lock. In the active shooter 
situations I had been trained 
for, there was a dark classroom 
with entrances that could be 
barricaded and people huddled in 
a corner whimpering quietly. This 
was far from my experience. Here 
I was in an all-concrete area with 
nothing to hide behind or block 
doors with. Fluorescent lights 
shined above us and daylight 
streamed through the windows. 
We were not “in hiding” because 
there was nowhere to hide. I 
saw the number four on a door 
and assumed I was on the fourth 
floor of the building. I did not feel 
like I was in lockdown, nothing 
felt secure or protected. Twenty 
minutes later, messages came 
through our phones that read 
“Active shooter in Mason Hall. 
Run, hide, fight.” Mason Hall was 
the building next to us. We had 
run long ago. We were not able 
to hide here. And we had nothing 
with which to fight. Helpless.
I was with about 10 others. 
Two happened to be my friends, 
even 
though 
we 
had 
been 
separated in the crowd, and the 
rest were strangers. A couple 
of them organized and spoke at 
the vigil. The oldest among us 
proposed we all sit in a circle, hold 
hands, and just breathe. My hands 
were clasped so tightly with the 
people next to me, my knuckles 
must have been white.
Over the next hour and a half, 
we all received text messages 
and calls from worried friends 
and family. Between Twitter, 
text 
messages 
and 
listening 
to the police scanner on our 
phones, countless rumors spread 
rapidly. We heard mixed reports, 
including “the shooter is in the 
library right now,” “they have 
caught two shooters and are 
looking for a third,” “the suspect 
is heading towards Brown Jug” 
and others. It was impossible 
to know what was true, as we 
received no concrete information 
from the University’s emergency 
alerts.
After nearly an hour of pacing, 
waiting and worrying, some other 
students found our group. They 
suggested we try to get to a higher 
floor, as we were only on the first 
floor – which was news to me. 
After finally getting to the top 
floor, we heard loud footsteps and 
a man’s voice shouting something, 

so we bolted back down the spiral 
staircase in a parade of terror 
(this was likely a police officer but 
we, of course, assumed it was a 
shooter).
We remained at the bottom 
of the staircase for the last 15 
minutes, all 40 of us at that point, 
while a series of announcements 
started coming on the intercom. 
A 
woman’s 
voice 
projected 
throughout the building that the 
library was safe and there were 
police here because the fire alarm 
had been triggered, though we 
never heard it go off. The next 
announcement reported that it 
was safe outside and we could 
choose whether to leave or not. 
The final one said that the police 
declared everyone must vacate 
the building so they could clear 
it. We did not know whether to 
trust the voice overhead. These 
announcements spread to social 
media and I received texts from 
worried 
friends 
saying 
that 
what the woman was saying 
contradicted police orders.
When we finally got the “all 
clear” message, we cautiously 
got up to exit the staircase. The 
emergency alarm went off as we 
opened the exterior door. Some 
hesitated, while others said to 
keep going. Once outside in the 
brisk, open air, there was a police 
officer positioned between us and 
the road. He wore a bulletproof 
vest and dark sunglasses. The 
officer sharply motioned for us to 
stop walking toward him and to go 
in a different direction. Bright red 
and blue lights lining the Diag faded 
behind us. We continued to walk 
home, unsure if we were safe yet. 
Local news declared that the active 
shooter was a false alarm caused 
by popping balloons, assumed to 
be gunshots, prompting police to 
tell the crowd at the vigil to run. I 
received many texts from relieved 
friends and family to the effect of 
“at least it wasn’t real,” completely 
invalidating my lived experience.
When I got home I peeled off 
my muddy jeans to reveal two 
badly bruised and scraped knees. 
I feel grateful for the condition 
of my knees. Grateful for these 
knees that sting with each step 
I take back into normalcy. I am 
grateful for them because they 
prove, to others and myself, 
that I survived a very real active 
shooter experience. That for an 
hour and a half I did not know if 
I would make it to see today.

Ashley Schnaar is a first-year 

graduate student at the University of 

Michigan’s School of Social Work. She 

can be reached at schashle@umich.

SUBMIT TO SURVIVORS SPEAK
The Opinion section has created a space in The Michigan 
Daily for first-person accounts of sexual assault and 
its corresponding personal, academic and legal 
implications. Submission information can be found at 
https://tinyurl.com/survivorsspeak2019.

False alarm

ASHLEY SCHNAAR | OP-ED

B

ig 
Brother? 
Or 
a 
breakthrough in crime 
fighting? 
Detroit 
has 
joined the growing list of cities 
turning to surveillance cameras 
as a tactic in their efforts to reduce 
crime.
Project Green Light allows 
businesses to pay a fee to have 
surveillance 
cameras 
stream 
directly into city police facilities. 
Police monitor the footage, aiming 
to catch crime in real-time as well 
as using it to track down and arrest 
suspects. The program has been 
touted by Detroit Mayor Mike 
Duggan as a major factor in the 
city’s recent crime reduction. He 
has used that momentum to push 
for a major expansion of Project 
Green 
Light, 
which 
includes 
integrating traffic cameras as well 
as schools with the 500 businesses 
currently providing surveillance 
footage. 
Duggan 
has 
also 
entertained making the program 
mandatory for businesses open at 
10 p.m.
Does Project Green Light 
actually 
reduce 
crime? 
It’s 
unclear. City officials say yes, 
pointing to a number of statistics 
including crime falling by 11 
percent at Green Light locations 
from 2016 to 2017 (the city as a 
whole saw a 7 percent decrease in 
crime over the same time period). 
However, no robust study has 
been done comparing crime at 
Green Light and non-Green Light 
locations, and critics, such as Eric 
Williams of the ACLU, say the 
data presented by city officials is 
anecdotal. Furthermore, similar 
projects in Baltimore, Chicago 
and Washington D.C. have seen 
benefits diminish as the programs 
expanded. London, often cited 
as the most surveilled city in the 
world, has seen no significant 

reduction in crime since the large-
scale rollout of its camera system.
The 
trend 
towards 
surveillance as a crime-fighting 
strategy 
isn’t 
confined 
to 
government. A number of startups 
have arisen claiming to provide 
protection for homeowners with 
“smart” video doorbells. One 
of the largest such companies, 
Ring, was recently acquired by 
Amazon for $1 billion. However, 
just as with city-wide studies, 
the effectiveness of home video 
doorbells is unclear, with some 
studies finding that areas with 
Ring doorbells saw increased 
crime compared to similar areas 
without them.
If surveillance programs do 
work, it’s only when they are 
implemented in a small, targeted 
way according to Eric Piza, an 
associate professor at the John Jay 
College of Criminal Justice. When 
programs become too big, studies 
have shown residents begin to 
believe police are not consistently 
monitoring the cameras. So, by 
expanding Project Green Light, 
Detroit may eliminate any positive 
effects of the program.
Putting its effects on crime 
aside, 
what 
does 
increased 
surveillance mean for people’s 
privacy 
and 
civil 
liberties? 
Nothing good. Project Green 
Light’s combination of traffic 
cameras and business footage 
potentially opens the door for 
tracking 
citizens 
across 
the 
city. As people travel, inevitably 
passing businesses and traffic 
lights, police will amass data that 
could allow them to connect the 
dots on an individual’s movement 
with relative ease. China is already 
doing this, using a vast network 
of cameras to track Xinjiang 
residents.

Additionally, 
the 
use 
of 
facial recognition software to 
identify persons of interest could 
lead to misidentifications with 
potentially serious consequences 
— like when an FBI examiner 
using 
facial 
recognition 
technology incorrectly identified 
a bank robber. The ACLU tested 
Amazon’s 
facial 
recognition 
software, Rekognition (currently 
in use by a number of police 
departments), on members of 
Congress and found it matched 
28 of them — disproportionately 
people of color — to criminal 
mugshots. This finding which 
begs the question: Should a tool 
which perpetuates biases already 
plaguing the criminal justice 
system be used by it?
Detroit’s push to expand 
Project Green Light is in stark 
contrast 
to 
the 
ambiguity 
surrounding its effects. Millions 
of dollars in taxpayer money 
have been allocated to the 
program along with the typical 
$4,000 fee each business pays 
to install cameras. That’s money 
that could be spent on strategies 
that are proven to reduce crime 
such as community policing 
and better lighting, not to 
mention employment, housing, 
education 
and 
recreation 
programs. Instead of treating 
the root causes of crime, city 
officials are pouring money 
into an unproven quick-fix that 
opens the door for privacy and 
civil liberty abuses. Preventing 
crime should be about lifting 
people up, not targeting them 
with a dubious surveillance 
program 
whose 
effects 
are 
likely inconsequential.

CHAND RAJENDRA-NICOLUCCI | COLUMN

Chand Rajendra-Nicolucci can be 

reached at chandrn@umich.edu.

Project Green Light’s end doesn’t justify the means

FROM THE DAILY

The University’s emergency response system needs improvement 
T

his past Saturday, there was a false alarm during which University 
of Michigan students were alerted about an active shooter situation 
in Mason Hall, leaving them confused, fearful and traumatized. 
This occurred at the same time as a vigil on the Diag for the victims of the 
recent attacks on two New Zealand mosques, where more than 50 people 
were killed. The Michigan Daily Editorial Board would like to specifically 
express our support for the Muslim community during this time, many of 
whom were disproportionately affected by this scare, and offer a statement 
of solidarity with the community.

The system failed 
to notify all 
students of the 
alarm, either at 
all or in a timely 
manner

