Committee recommends safety procedures on UCA campus
Wednesday, November 26, 2008 10:57 AM CST
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — The University of Central Arkansas should restrict motor vehicle traffic on campus at night and continue studying the possibility of using the state’s alert system to alert students and faculty during in an emergency, a committee created to look at campus safety recommended Monday.
The Emergency Notification Committee, created after a shooting on the UCA campus last month that left two students dead, also recommended installing a new siren and public announcement system on campus, as well as a closed-circuit television monitoring system.
UCA spokesman Warwick Sabin said the committee’s report has been presented to interim President Tom Courtway and the university’s board of trustees.
“The president will review the report and make policy recommendations to the board,” Sabin said.
Courtway appointed the committee after the Oct. 26 shooting to review the university’s emergency notification system and make recommendations on how it can be improved.
Freshman Ryan Henderson, 18, of Little Rock, and sophomore Chavares Block, 19, of Dermott — were shot and killed. A third victim, Martrevis Norman of Blytheville, was treated at a local hospital and released. He was a friend of one of the slain students.
Four men were later arrested and charged in the killings.
The committee, chaired by UCA Vice President for Student Services Ronnie Williams, met several times before making the recommendations, including Friday at the state Department of Emergency Management headquarters at Camp Robinson in North Little Rock to see a demonstration of the state’s emergency notification system.
In Monday’s report, the committee recommended testing the emergency notification system at UCA before the end of the fall semester. The system enables organizations to send messages to any number of people by telephone, e-mail, pager, fax, Instant Messenger, texting, PDA and other devices, according to the committee’s report.
The committee said it would cost about $38,250 to provide the service to the university and students the first year of implementation, and $31,000 the second year.
The committee recommended a siren/PA system “to provide immediate campus-wide voice and siren warnings to include both inside and outside university structures.”
The panel also recommended campus access be restricted from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m., saying the “restriction of campus access at night would create a psychological atmosphere that discourages or deters criminal activity.”
“It would also improve law enforcement’s ability to monitor and control traffic flow through campus by focusing on certain pattern activities to these key access points,” the report said.
Closed-circuit television monitoring would enhance the restricting of traffic access, the report concluded.
