2 — Friday, March 22, 2019
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LSA freshman Claire Hao on covering “Solidarity vigil for New Zealand
mosques shooting held in Diag, interrupted early due to false active
shooter threat”:
“I think covering this story really made me realize that I was a guest to the event. Every
event I go to I have that sensation but this one especially. For one, I knew I should not
live tweet this event. I cannot live tweet somebody’s grief and somebody’s fear and
somebody’s mourning. Especially then, it was important for me to be present in the
moment, and to be there not only as a reporter, but to also grieve and mourn and show
solidarity just like everybody else who was there.”
“I think it’s such a huge shame that this event was disrupted, this event deserved coverage
on its own for the event itself. I wanted to make the disruption of the event as small a part
of the story as I could, because in the end, this was supposed to be a space for healing
and sharing and solidarity, and that had already been interrupted once. I tried in my article
to just use as many quotes as I could and to minimize summary, because I thought the
speakers had beautiful things to say, and it would just be such a better reflection of the
article if I did as little work as possible and let the quotes speak for themselves.”
TUESDAY:
By Design
THURSDAY:
Twitter Talk
FRIDAY:
Behind the Story
WEDNESDAY:
This Week in History
MONDAY:
Looking at the Numbers
QUOTE OF THE WE E K
After these events, it has become clear that we need to
develop direct protocols for breaking news events that
potentially threaten public safety. Our promise to our readers
is that we will be better prepared if another incident of this
gravity occurs in the University or Ann Arbor community. The
Daily has consulted other media outlets for advice and tips and
will continue to discuss different facets of our new protocols
with professionals and members of our community.”
The Managing Editors of The Michigan Daily, in response to Saturday’s active shooter scare and a now-deleted tweet about
unsubstantiated reports of wounded students
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“
Overton said the main goal of
officers is to get to the scene is quickly
as possible and then, as soon as the
officers are dispatched, the emergency
alert is sent out. Some may have gotten
it sooner than others — notably, doctors
may have been notified prior to others
on campus.
Regarding the communication of
different law enforcement agencies,
Overton said everyone trains together
for these scenarios and signs a mutual
aid agreement. At a site, there is an
incident commander in charge of
all agencies helping to investigate
the situation. Everything happens
through this person in order to ease
communication
and
coordination,
according to Overton.
When an incident like this occurs,
DPSS
utilizes
their
campus-wide
emergency alert system. Students,
faculty and staff can sign up for voice
message and text message alerts, and in
theory, everyone in the University email
system receives these alerts via email.
DPSS started receiving reports of
a potential active shooter at 4:35 p.m.,
according to a statement from the Office
of Public Affairs. DPSS’ first email alert
urging campus to “run, hide, fight”
came at 5:06 p.m.
However, LSA sophomore Sumaya
Tabbah, a member of the DPSS student
advisory board and of the Muslim
Students’ Association, said she did not
receive any email notifications at all.
“For the emails, I didn’t even get an
email, which is concerning,” Tabbah
said.
Overton said DPSS has received
many of these complaints of people
receiving delayed alerts or receiving
none, and is currently analyzing its
system to figure out why this happened.
“We did receive multiple complaints
on the system,” Overton said. “ … We are
aware that some of the alerts took a lot
longer than they should have, and we
are looking into that.”
Overton urged people to download
DPSS’ app, which is geared more
toward alerts and push notifications.
Business senior Elizabeth Fakhoury,
chair of DPSS Student Advisory Board,
said the board has been working with
DPSS to promote the app and better
configure it for students. She noted the
student-DPSS disconnect has been a
focus since the board’s inception.
“Not signing up for alerts and being
in the know-how is what we were
tackling within the last year, and so
DPSS created a Facebook page to update
students on what’s going on and so
through all of this, they were updating
the alerts and they were saying you
can sign onto emergency alerts here,”
Fakhoury said.
Currently, the emergency alerts via
text are received via an opt-in system.
Students, faculty and staff do not receive
these unless they explicitly sign up.
Overton said DPSS has recommended
transitioning to an opt-out system for
years, but that this decision is ultimately
up to a higher University authority.
Tabbah said she and other Muslim
leaders on campus met with University
President Mark Schlissel Wednesday
morning to discuss some of these issues.
She said making the alerts an opt-out
system is a question they raised.
“But for the text messages, we
asked Schlissel this morning why is it
an opt-in system instead of an opt-out
system,” Tabbah said. “It should be
you’re automatically signed up for it
and then if you feel like you don’t want
to get those then you should opt-out,
instead of putting the responsibility on
the students.”
According to Tabbah, Schlissel’s
response was that in the past, they had
to make it opt-in due to complications
with legality. Tabbah said Schlissel
speculated that pay-per-text phone
plans may have been the reason.
II.
The
spread
of
(mis)
information
Michael Colegrove, a college safety
consultant, said when there is a gap in
time between an incident and when
there is official information released,
people
cling
onto
information,
regardless if it is verified or not.
“The need for almost instantaneous
communication is necessary, especially
communication from a known source,”
Colegrove said. “What happens if you
have a gap that exists between the
time of the incident and the time the
word gets out from an official source
— that vacuum is filled with a lot of
misinformation.”
This unverified information spread
rapidly
across
campus,
giving
different people unique experiences.
Standing on the steps of the
Graduate
Library
reading
her
poem at the vigil commemorating
the lives of people killed in the
New Zealand mosques shooting,
Fadwa Ashur, a student at Eastern
Michigan University, saw the two
police officers running towards the
Diag before she heard them. DPSS
had been at the event already, as
organizers knew this was an event
that could potentially attract hate
and violence. When the police yelled
repeatedly at the crowd to move, she
ran with friends into the Graduate
Library, where they stayed for two
hours.
Since she was not University-
affiliated, she did not sign up for
or receive the DPSS alerts. In the
Graduate Library, Ashur discovered
her phone had no cell service and
could not connect to the University’s
internet network. According to
Ashur, she received information
from a TV in the room they were in.
“There was a TV in the middle
of the room (I was in) that showed
the three alerts, (my friends and
I) got (the alerts) through that,”
Ashur said. “I don’t know about
other people, but I couldn’t connect to
MGuest so I didn’t have Internet, and I
had no network… I couldn’t call anyone
through my phone. I couldn’t even
reach out to my family or anything…
That was the scariest part.”
Ashur explained she and her friends
saw police officers running nearby
about one hour into hiding after they
had taken refuge in the Graduate
Library. The officers were responding
to a false fire alarm; however, Ashur
said she and her friends had no way of
knowing this. Based on the alerts they
had seen, Ahsur said they assumed the
police were responding to an active
shooter.
At 5:28 p.m., in a video obtained by
The Daily, an announcement can be
heard informing students of the false
fire alarm. The announcement also
said the shooter was unconfirmed and
told students they could either stay in
the Graduate Library or leave. Ashur
expressed she felt the announcement
could not confirm they would be safe
leaving, so she and her friends stayed in
the Graduate Library.
“My friends and I stayed (in
Hatcher), and I think only a couple of
people left,” Ashur said. “Because that
(announcement) was not reassuring…
‘Unconfirmed’ means they did not tell
us whether or not there was a shooter.
We stayed there, we were like we’re not
going to risk leaving.”
LSA senior Brendon Cho expressed
confusion at this announcement. He
heard people inside the Graduate
Library were told to stay put, while the
police scanner speakers were saying
they should evacuate.
“From what I’m told there were
conflicting reports from the police and
the police radio, as well as from the
announcement they had in Hatcher,”
Cho said. “Apparently the police really
wanted everyone to clear from the
Hatcher building, but they were told by
the PA system to kind of stay there and
hunker down at Hatcher, so it was kind
of hard to find who was really right and
who to trust.”
University alum Brittney Williams,
who was in town visiting on Saturday,
voiced her disappointment with the
University’s communication protocol
in a tweet that as of publication has
received 200 likes and 28 retweets. In
an interview with The Daily, Williams
further
questioned
why
certain
staff members received phone calls
immediately while other staff and
students didn’t.
“(The University’s communication
protocol)
was
mindblowing,
in
particular because the people (my
friends and I) were checking in on
while we were waiting for an official
alert were current students, who in my
opinion should’ve known pretty much
immediately,” Williams said.
ALERT
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See ALERT, Page 3