In the event of an emergency on campus, Mississippi State University has an assortment of drills catered to a variety of specific potential crisis situations in order to prepare students and faculty for any unexpected or dangerous turn of events.
The crisis action team was formed in 2005 as part of the Maroon Alert system to notify students about situations on or around campus.
It was also set up to design and put drills and exercises into place that can be practiced in case of emergency or alert conditions on campus.
The potential situations that these drills prepare students and faculty on campus for include weather incidents, shootings, hostage situations, traffic accidents, fires and even a chemical spill.
Bill Kibler, vice president for student affairs, is the incident commander of the crisis action team and is responsible for approving the practice of drills.
He said the crisis action team is important because it helps with implementing drills.
“The crisis action team is here to establish when we are doing exercises and what the subject of the drill is,” he said.
Kibler said when a drill is practiced, only a few people know it is a drill.
He said the team finds out when the exercise is implemented that it is a drill, but it is expected to follow the protocol as if it were a real situation.
The first thing the crisis action team does in a drill is call the incident commander, who then brings the team together to discuss the situation, Kibler said.
Once the team is gathered, everyone goes to the command center to discuss the situation and follow the proper steps, which differ in each potential emergency situation.
Kibler said after the drill is over the crisis action team and others involved with the drill end the exercise by gathering for a debriefing where they evaluate the drill’s success and aspects that can be improved.
“The assessment piece at the end is just as important as the exercise,” Kibler said.
He said there is always room for improvement, the primary reason for assessing completed drills.
Thomas Bourgeois, dean of students, said since 2007 there have been 24 drills on campus to prepare for a variety of crisis situations.
He said 97 percent of real emergencies are weather related.
“We do these drills often to practice how to respond to weather situations, chemical spills, shooting situations and hostage situations,” Bourgeois said.
Skye Cooley, professor of communication, said he likes to make his students aware of the drills.
In his classrooms, he said he emphasizes two main factors he considers important in the event of a real shooting or hostage situation: leadership and organization.
“As a teacher, I would be the leader. I talk about drills because order produces a calm for people,” Cooley said.
Cooley said he does not know much about the Maroon Alert system and the drills in place at MSU because he has only been teaching here for two semesters.
However, he said he finds the system to be proactive from what he has seen and read about the system.
“MSU seems to be a very well prepared university,” Cooley said.