ALICE Program Prepares Students, Staff for Emergency Situations

Clad in a white t-shirt that read “Natural Selection,” a high school student, armed with a carbine rifle and 12-guage shotgun, walked to a table across from a row of computers in the library where a 17-year old girl was hiding. He hit the surface of the table twice and knelt. “Peek-a-boo” he said, shooting her fatally in the head.

At 11:19 a.m. on April 20, 1999, seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold opened fire on the grounds of Columbine High School in Colorado, killing twelve students, one teacher, and injuring more than 20 others before committing suicide.

During the next 15 years, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook and other school-shooting tragedies followed, leading law enforcement officials to question traditional lock-down procedures.

“We’ve actually trained over 55 million Americans almost yearly for the last 20 years in doing the wrong thing,” said Lieutenant Joseph Hendry, active shooter response expert and consultant to the Ohio Department of Homeland Security. “That’s why we see such large casualty counts, especially in education, and especially in the 20-to-30 age category when these incidents happen nationwide.”

Forming A New Plan of Action

Kent State students, faculty and staff are becoming more aware of their options in emergency situations through ALICE (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate), a program Swat officer Greg Crane of Dallas, Texas, established to keep his wife, the principal at Norwood Elementary School, safe after Columbine.

“What Greg found was that civilians were basically trained to do nothing,” Hendry said. “If the police officers are outside, why would you be pulling the drapes? If the gunman is inside, what are the students trained to do? They are still trained to sit on the floor and be quiet, which is counterproductive to survival.”

In the wake of Virginia Tech, Hendry said Kent State placed him on a committee to study school security experts’ recommendations throughout the country. In conducting his own research, Hendry said he discovered that traditional lockdown procedures stemmed from drive-by shooting training in the 1970’s in Southern California.

“That’s why you’re pulling the drapes; that’s why you’re turning off the lights; that’s why you’re sitting on the floor,” he said. “That concept was promulgated throughout the United States by people copying and pasting a plan. When I talked to people in education, they couldn’t tell me why they were doing the things they were doing, which, to me, was just stunning.”

Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate

Hendry said the average law enforcement response time to an active shooter incident is 5 to 6 minutes. In those crucial moments, ALICE prepares people to evacuate the scene if possible.

“Windows are just doors waiting to happen,” he said. “You can get out a second floor window and hang from the ledge rather than just jumping.”

ALICE advises to commence lockdown if the room is impossible to evacuate, barricading doors to allow for movement and countermeasures inside the room, Hendry said.

As a last resort, ALICE advises direct contact, countering the intruder with objects in the room or using chaos against the gunman, Hendry said.

During school visits, Hendry said he has seen students shielding themselves with textbooks. When he asked them why they had books on their heads, they said most people in active shooter incidents are shot in the head.

“That is true, but I’m like, throw the text books, move, get out of the room, do whatever you have to do to survive, but sitting on the floor with a math book on your head thinking it is going to keep you safe is a fallacy,” he said.

ALICE Training at Kent State

Kent State has provided students and staff with ALICE training and workshops for five and a half years, and as of fall 2014, incoming freshmen are required to take ALICE training. After the active shooter incident on campus in April, Hendry said more students enrolled.

“The demand for classes began to increase,” he said. “The more we taught, the more people wanted to come to class. When we had the incident on April 2, I think that was the fulcrum where everything totally tipped over and now it’s become mandatory for incoming freshmen.”

In dealing with dangerous intruders, Hendry said ALICE prepares students to react.

“These guys use all kinds of weapons,” he said. “They use knives, bombs, gasoline, guns— there’s even been an incident with a chainsaw in the United States,” Hendry said. “(Crane) developed a program that deals with all of that. It’s an attempt to give everyone all of their options and train them in order to mitigate casualties when an incident does occur.”

Renee Romine, director of Human Resources Training and Development at Kent State, has spent 11 years working in human resources training at the university. While training sessions, which typically hold between 30 and 40 people, are geared toward students, Romine said the workshops serve to inform faculty and staff.

Hendry said approximately 15,000 people have been trained at Kent State, and said he has never received negative feedback.

Sophomore psychology major Brianna McCaskey said she completed ALICE training last fall after her friends encouraged her to take the class.

“The first thing I would do in an emergency situation is run and try to get away,” she said. “I would make decisions that would save my life instead of just reverting back to my fear and hiding in a corner somewhere.”

Although she doesn’t anticipate an emergency situation on campus, McCaskey said her training helped prepare her. In her class, she said she learned that most campus shooters don’t have good aim, and that by running the “zig-zag,” students increase the shooter’s likeliness to miss.

“It’s so scary to think that anything like this could happen at Kent, but I think that it’s better to be safe than sorry,” she said. “I think if the whole entire campus was prepared and knew what to do, it would save lives.”