The CWU Rave Alert! System informed students, faculty and staff of an active shooter threat nine minutes after the first 911 call on Feb. 6. That is about the time needed to complete the procedure, according to CWU Chief of Staff Linda Schactler.“The day we can get rid of humans it’ll go a lot faster,“ Schactler said.

The alert sent out county-wide by the Kittcom 911 service at 5:25 p.m. was only received by other law enforcement, Schactler said.

Emergency agencies were first activated; then the university warned everybody of a potential threat, nine minutes later.

CWU’s alert system pushes out text messages, emails and robocalls to the entire university community. CWU has about 12,000 students and hundreds of faculty and staff members.
Last Wednesday, the alarm first sounded at Lind Hall shut down the Ellensburg campus for two hours while officers from multiple federal, state and local law enforcement agencies tried to verify rumors of multiple active shooters in Lind Hall, the SURC and Language and Literature building. The alarm would eventually prove false.

Schactler did not say what kind of threats were being made that were overheard by another student who told ROTC in Lind Hall triggering the evacuation of the building at 5:15 p.m. Schactler said that revealing the nature and content of these threats would violate the student’s privacy. Schactler said that she could not comment on the student who overheard the conversation in the Case Management office, as it would also be protected under federal student privacy laws.

Schactler said that the police issued the all-clear after they had searched all buildings where presence of an active shooter had been reported. Police then focused on clearing all other buildings around campus.

The university said that they tweeted the all-clear as soon as they had verbal confirmation at 7:10. The official alert was delayed and sent at 7:27 because it took first responders time to reach the Rave Alert! System.

Some students were unhappy with the lack of communication from the university during the two-hour lockdown period.

“It’s so important for us to know that a threat could be happening sooner rather than later,” CWU freshman Devin Reed said. “Knowing that there was already a threat beforehand, before we even got the alert, kind of bothers me that we aren’t fully safe.”

Freshman Seth James Keeney was in the SURC eating with his friends when the message came. With no real direction, everyone started to move to the front doors when a worker stopped them and directed them to shelter in the bookstore, Keeney said. It made sense to Keeney that the university or police didn’t want large groups of people to be walking around outside, but after 10-15 minutes it felt like nobody knew what to do.

From there, Keeney said people in the SURC were escorted outside. “We were just outside. They didn’t tell us to go home. They didn’t tell us to do anything. They just walked us out,” Keeney said.

Keeney ran back to his dorm.

“I was highly disappointed because I was at a point where I felt unsafe and I had no idea what was going on,” Keeney said.

Keeney felt like there was no organization, which could have led to people walking back into danger after being escorted out of it.

“If I was in the university’s position, I would definitely get ahold of everybody sooner, keep them more intact with everything that was going on,” Keeney said.

Other students were in secluded areas, alone or with a couple of other people. Senior Carlos Sullivan was on the north side of campus in Randall Hall when he got the alert. He said he was shocked and found it hard to believe. He turned to the student next to him to ask if he also got the message.

“We went into a room and barricaded ourselves and we thought, ‘Well this will be over probably shortly.’ I just had such a hard time believing that it could be real at that moment because it was such a shocking thing,” Sullivan said. “But as the night kept going and we’re hearing crazy stories, we kept barricading the doors.”

Andrea Eklund, associate professor in apparel, textiles and merchandising said that she was proud of her students’ concern for each other. Using the group’s private Facebook chat, Eklund posted, “Are you ok?” Immediately students began posting replies confirming they were okay and checking in with each other to make sure everyone was safe.

Other students were taking shelter in Michaelsen, and were told by Eklund not to leave until the police said it was okay. However, even though the campus sent out an alert stating that the police had secured all buildings and the campus was all-clear, Michaelsen was never visited by the police. “No-one ever checked the rooms or anything, so they, the students, called the police and asked if it was safe to leave because they were not sure if it was safe or not,” Eklund said. According to Eklund, students were hiding in Michaelsen past the all-clear, almost until 8 p.m.

Senior Erica Lawson was in class on the second floor of Black Hall when she first heard from a peer that there was a possible active shooter on campus. A few minutes later the official alert came through and the class locked all of the doors, turned off the lights and hid in the classroom.

Because nobody in the class knew where the active shooter was, they had to be very quiet, so no one was listening to the police scanner, Lawson said.

“Our professor finally called the police again and she said, ‘I’ve got students in here that are terrified. We would like a police escort out of here,’ and they told us to just walk out through one of the doors,” Lawson said.

According to Lawson, the police said it was safe to leave Black Hall before the all-clear was given. Once they were out of the building, they didn’t know where to go because the police didn’t tell them. The class decided that everyone should get home safely so they decided to travel back in groups.

Lawson said that she thinks the university handled the situation well, although she wishes she had had some sort of police escort.

“People in my class where terrified; some people actually thought they were gonna die,” Lawson said. “Some of us also kept getting false information, like the girl next to me: she got [a message] from one of her friends, I think, and it said that one person was dead.”

ASCWU President Edith Rojas said that she wished the administration focused more on being as transparent as possible about what happened.

“I had a parent email me concerned for their child’s safety. As the student body president, it was hard to read that. As a peer, I understood,” Rojas said.

Rojas, in partnership with the President’s Office, will be hosting an open listening session on Feb. 14 from 5-6:30 p.m. in the SURC Pit for students to discuss their experiences and thoughts about the situation.