Recently there have been many terrorism-related acts in the United States. On Feb. 3 California Lutheran University conducted an on-campus drill to prepare for a possible mass shooting.

Many students had questions about the drill because of the mass emails, texts and phone calls from the school. However, students seemed to be positive about the alerts.

“I received eight to nine emails from Cal Lutheran,” Saumya Sheth, MBA and graduate student at Cal Lutheran, said. “I read the messages but then I deleted them because it was just a drill. It was a good exercise. In the first text message they said it was a drill and that it is going to be happening. I think they send it just to make people move around quickly.”

In contrast, some students did not receive emails. Freshman Lauren Curl, music and education major said she was one of those students.

“I actually had one friend who did not receive anything, but I think it is something you have to sign-up for when you come to school and I don’t think he signed,” Curl said.

“The CLU alert information is what determines everything you will receive when a drill goes on,” Ryan Van Ommeren, associate vice president of Operations and Planning said. “It is based on what people enter into the system. Whatever people enter is what they get.”

Van Ommeren said students could set up the alert system in order for their parents to receive the rave app messages.

“The most important message is the ‘all other building shelter in place.’ Some students did not receive the message or there was a delay of eight minutes,” Van Ommeren said.

There are many frightening school shootings and other terror-related happenings around the world, which makes Cal Lutheran take a greater precaution by exercising the drill.

“Because of the San Bernardino shooting, we do want to make sure that this is a drill that people understand,” Van Ommeren said. “We purposely send out many texts. We want to test the system and test our ability.”

Cal Lutheran is not holding back on the drill and its messaging and some students claimed they received messages that included the same content repeatedly.

“We send out 5,000 text messages, email and phone calls each,” Van Ommeren said.

“The rave messages did not work exactly how we wanted it to and they were sent out too many times,” Van Ommeren said. “We got a dialogue going on campus.”

Lisa Hemmingson
Staff Writer
Published February 10th, 2016