Are SC State University Students Safe on Campus?

Sharlene Luke

Dante Mozie

Online Journalism

9/14/23

 

Are SC State University Students Safe on Campus?

 

At South Carolina State University, every few months or so off campus, there is some form of shooting. Sure, these shootings do not happen directly on campus, but still, sometimes it makes me wonder if students at SC State are truly safe? Between school shootings in America as well as your local grocery stores, I am wondering if SC State is doing enough to keep its students and faculty safe. According to washingtonpost.com, “More than 356,000 students have experienced gun violence at school since Columbine. There have been 386 school shootings since 1999 and there were more school shootings in 2022 — 46 — than in any year since at least 1999.”

One major thing that I noticed this university is not doing on annual basis is active shooting drills. I got an alert from my phone from SCSU alert saying that in late July 2023 they were going to have an active shooting drill at 9 am. Personally speaking, this is the first time I heard that the university was having an active shooter drill, and I wasn't even on campus during that time. Between shootings off-campus, and not having active shooter drills, I wanted to know the opinion of the campus police chief, as well as two students on the safety of our university.

I asked Delano Whitfield, who is Mr. SC State, if he believed that SCSU is truly a safe campus. “I do believe that SCSU is a safe campus, but there also needs to be more security on some of the gates near off campus housing areas. Protection is more than just checking students ID card,” Delano said. I also asked him what could make students feel safer on campus. “The university should implement a schedule where twice a week, there is security checks from the head of the security and have on campus discussions about how students feel about this campuses security and how to make changes to it. The university should develop the area around the school so it can make students feel comfortable. Also, the university should get a higher level of security, as well as more emergency blue light boxes on certain areas of campus, such as one near the softball field, the basketball court near Mitchell Hall, and one at the student plaza.” The last question I asked him is if he thinks SCSU should have annual active shooting drills. “At least 7 times out of the year, the university should have active shooting drills specifically on Wednesdays. I chose Wednesdays to do active shooting drills because that day is usually when campus has the most activity.”

I also asked Essence Adams, who is a Communications major, these exact same questions. The following are her responses. "I do not believe this is a safe campus due to the fact that there is consistently something bad happening to the point where it starts to feel normal. I believe that SCSU should have annual active shooting drills and educate students on how to handle bad situations like that. Also, the campus police should start to make more connections with the students so that they can feel more comfortable reaching out to campus police."

I asked SC State's Campus Police Chief, Timoth Taylor, what were some of the measures that the campus police department has done to keep SCSU students safe. "The president has invested in additional cameras on our campus. We have someone sitting watching those cameras at night, watching all the activity taken place at South Carolina State University, and that is how we can dispatch officers quick into those areas that we may have problems within the university. We also added 6 DTA agents who are security guards that are patrolling the campus." Another question that I asked was are their future measures for campus safety in the works. "Yes, there are future measures in the works to keep this campus safe. We are planning to hire new police officers. Also, we are going to put stronger gates up around the university, so people can't just come through those gates at night." 

The next question that I asked was did he believe that the university should have annual active shooting drills. "The university should definitely have acting shooting drills. During the summer, I took the whole department through active shooting training so that we can be prepared if we ever have an active shooter on campus. We will know what to do if we have victims shot by an active shooter." The last question that I asked him was what the measures are being taken to prevent an active shooting event on campus. "The university is adding more law enforcement personal as well as monitoring people as they go through the universities gates."