2 — Friday, March 22, 2019
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The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is published Monday through Friday during the 
fall and winter terms by students at the University OF Michigan. One copy is available 
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University affiliates are subject to a reduced subscription rate. On-campus subscriptions 
for fall term are $35. Subscriptions must be prepaid. 

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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
From Page 1

See ALERT, Page 3

