SRU will have a campus emergency preparedness drill next week, which will help to practice what the campus should do in case of an emergency.
The event was organized by various on-campus groups and will take place the morning of April 26 from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.
Paul Novak, executive director of planning and emergency health services, said he and his team are excited to see the drill after working on it for sometime.
“We now have the opportunity to practice for what we’ve been planning for over a number of years now,” Novak said. “We’ve held various tabletop sessions where we discussed and coordinated with campus organization on how we would handle possible threats. We had to crawl before we walked, and now we’re ready to executive our first drill since I’ve been here.”
The drill will test out SRU’s emergency communication system in the case of a simulated minor disaster. Students and SRU employees will be notified when the drill starts and ends though the e2Campus alerts and have been updated on the event via email over the last month.
“I cannot express enough how grateful we are to President Norton and her cabinet, along with the PR department here at the university,” Novak said. “Updates on things like Top of the Rock and e2Campus have made the connection to students streamlined and effective. We want to stress that this is only a drill as not to incite panic on campus. The university has been more than cooperative in making this drill a reality.”
Novak said he and his team set aside two hours for the drill to take place and expect to carry out their response to the pseudo-threat well within the allotted time. EHS and other campus groups will carry out previously assigned crisis protocols and notify each other using the emergency communication system.
“As we practice, we will get better,” Novak said. “The more we prepare for possible threats in the future goes hand-in-hand with making Slippery Rock a safer place for students and staff. This drill is just the first step of many toward that goal.”
