Emergency on campus

EDITORIAL: Crisis response lacks sense of urgency

Riverside City College students received a text message at 9:36 a.m. April 10 of a situation happening on campus, telling students to immediately shelter in place.

Specifics were not given.

Half the Viewpoints staff was on campus while the others were not. Due to the lack of communication and clarity, we were all left to assume that the incident was extremely dangerous.

Hours later, it was confirmed an unhoused man was wandering on campus carrying a knife. No one was injured.

It would take a full hour longer before the campus alert system let the students know that this was not an active shooter situation, something that many were assuming at the time. Students who were in class when the incident started were locked inside for more than two hours while the situation unfolded in the northwest corner of campus near the Child Development Center & Learning Laboratory. Classes were being canceled by professors who were seemingly just as much in the dark as the students were. Again many who were left locked in the classrooms still assumed it could be an active shooting situation. Due to the national climate those students were preparing for the worst scenario possible.

We have expressed our concerns before about the reliability of safety protocols and communication with all Riverside Police force and school officials. Here we are again worried about what our school will or won’t do to protect us.

A 2016 shooting at White Park, which is located across the street from the Riverside Community College District offices, took over an hour and a half to be

See SAFETY on page 7