Meghan Bannister put on a dress for class, a choice befitting the warm weather in Tallahassee. Thursday stood out as her last day of class before graduation but by noon, the Florida State University senior had to grapple with the chilling reality of a gunman opening fire on the sprawling campus.
Bannister had been practicing active shooter drills since she was in fourth grade and had heard the horror stories from her friends who experienced the 2018 Parkland high school massacre. So, when they heard the shots, she and her classmates from all different states knew exactly what to do as the school went on lockdown.
“We sent desks to either door, we sat up against the wall altogether. We held hands, the lights came off, we fell silent, we prayed. It’s so sad that everyone knew how to act,” Bannister told CNN.
Students all over campus hid under desks, barricaded doors and texted loved ones as emergency sirens wailed in the background. Within four minutes after the first shot was fired, the suspected gunman, FSU student Phoenix Ikner, 20, was shot by police and taken into custody, authorities said.
Thousands of students and staff received emergency alerts about the attack and went into lockdown. Two men working near the student union were killed and five others were wounded in the shooting. Another person was injured while trying to run away, police said. The hospital declined to say whether Ikner was one of their patients.
Law enforcement officers responded just two minutes after the first 911 call reported the shooting, authorities said. University officials, along with law enforcement and school safety preparedness experts credit the rapid response from police and timely messages through the school’s emergency alert system for preventing an even greater tragedy.
Students like Bannister agree the response time is what saved lives: “The fact there is no student that passed away is truly a miracle and remarkable, and that is all credited to Florida State.”
They followed the advice offered in the alerts as best they could but encountered a problem.
“Lock and stay away from all doors and windows and be prepared to take additional protective measures,” the FSU school alert said.
Bannister and her classmate Sarah Walker were inside a classroom on the second floor of a building with a view of the student union, located right at the top of the staircase, open to the hallway.
As they went into lockdown, a classmate shouted to lock the doors at the front and the back of the classroom, Bannister recounted. The student who was standing at the door said in response: “These doors don’t lock,” she said. “The response was, ‘What do you mean they don’t lock?’”
Walker said their classmates broke down. “The fear in people’s faces, the shaking and the crying started really badly in everyone after we realized there were no locks on the doors,” Walker said.
“The only thing I could think about was if the shooter wanted to enter a classroom building from where he was at the union, he could walk right in, to the top of the stairs. We are the first classroom. Any external person had access to that room,” Bannister said.
Brian Higgins, who teaches emergency preparedness and response at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and consults several colleges for active shooter response, said: “It doesn’t seem like not having locks contributed to any casualties, but at the same time they’re an integral part of an active shooter response plan.”
Walker and Bannister are now trying to bring awareness to their school and others by organizing a petition signed by nearly 30,000 people and counting, calling for working locks on all classroom doors. “No one should have to be in a classroom feeling unprotected during what was the most terrifying moment of our lives. This is a basic safety measure that can no longer be overlooked,” the petition says.
Many of the students sheltering in place across the campus who signed the petition reported they could not lock their classroom doors because they were not equipped with functioning locks.
FSU students in support of the petition shared similar experiences in the comments, saying working locks would have made them feel safer. They recalled watching faculty members attempt to lock the doors “before giving up and shutting the lights off”; watching their teacher check the doors before informing them “they don’t lock”; or using their body weight and chairs to hold the door closed.
The university told CNN while it will take some time, it will inspect door locks as part of an overall review of campus safety.
“Florida State University is continually reviewing and assessing our security protocols to ensure the safety of everyone on campus. Several layers of security are in place, including a robust police department that responded accordingly last Thursday,” a spokesperson said.
The idea of ‘safe’ cannot exist in open campuses
Colleges and universities like FSU are more challenging to fully lock down due to the open nature of their campuses, compared to K-12 schools, which are typically more enclosed, according to Juliette Kayyem, a CNN national security analyst who works with schools on security planning. This can make them a soft target for such attacks, she said.
“It’s a unique population. They have a tremendous amount of freedom … Classes that don’t take attendance, they can sleep wherever they want,” Kayyem said. At the same time, parents and families represent the outside stakeholders who have a key interest in emergency situations like an active shooter, she added.
Another challenge is perimeter control because colleges and universities exist as open environments for classes, social activities and extracurriculars, Kayyem said. FSU’s campus, for example, is roughly the size of 400 football fields.
“The idea of ‘safe,’ can’t exist in this environment, so what you do is try to make these universities safer,” Kayyem said, like controlling access to buildings, strong lines of communication, security planning and lockdown training. The goal, she added, is to fortify the campus with relatively easy, cost-effective ways to minimize the likelihood of a high fatality event.
The speedy police response to Thursday’s shooting aligns with the commonly taught active shooter protocol established after the Columbine school shooting of 1999, when Colorado police waited roughly an hour after gunfire erupted in the school for SWAT teams to arrive, during which two young men killed 13 people.
“The active shooter training is different now. The first on the scene get in there, go to the sound of gunfire, neutralize the individual to avoid more people being seriously injured or killed,” said Charles Ramsey, former police chief of the Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia police departments.
Ramsey said of the police response to the FSU shooting: “It was absolutely incredible how fast they got there … Within two minutes, they arrived on the scene and were able to neutralize the individual to keep him from causing even more harm.”
Relying on any one safety measure is the ‘single point of failure’
In an active shooter response plan, security planning consultant Brian Higgins says, “there are no silver bullets,” as relying on a single protocol could lead to failure. “Even if they have all the locks working, it could be at that very moment in a panic somebody doesn’t turn the handle all the way and the hatch doesn’t catch,” he added.
FSU adopted a “Run, Hide, Fight” protocol similar to other schools in responding to an active shooter event, which involves a one-hour training class led by the campus police department’s Crime Prevention Officers, according to its website.
While no method is perfect, Kayyem said the quick dissemination of information through alert systems is vital for students to know where the biggest threat is coming from, so they know what actions to take. That includes the capacity to lock-in, she added.
“The locks not being functional is just inexcusable. If you think you need a lock, you’ve got to test and practice them. This is a very easy solution because in most instances, all you want to do is protect the students inside,” she added.
When Meghan Bannister, Sarah Parker and their classmates realized their door couldn’t be locked, the professor held it shut, putting his life on the line, while male students ensured female students were covered by desks and stood by the windows, giving updates on what they saw.
“I felt powerless, so unsafe, so unsettled,” Parker said. Bannister said the anticipation of waiting for someone to enter the classroom, either the SWAT team or the shooter, was “the scariest and worst moment of my life.”
The purpose of their call to action with the petition is for the school to understand “the petrifying fear we felt … It was just so heightened, the environment of the room, when we realized we weren’t able to lock the doors,” Parker said. They also want to bring awareness to other schools to ensure school communities “have that basic right of protection,” she added.
It never crossed their minds to check whether their classroom doors could lock, but now both Bannister and Parker say they will never again feel safe in a confined room without the protective measure.
The two students commended Florida State University for its response to the tragedy, offering psychological services and deadline extensions.
“You never think that this could happen to you,” said Bannister. “I wouldn’t be able to get through this if it wasn’t for them. I’m so proud to be a Seminole. We are unconquered.”
Parker agreed, saying she will always remember how her classmates banded together to stay strong and calm each other down.
“I just want to say how much I love my classmates. I’ll never forget their faces,” Parker said through tears. “We just did the best we could in the moment. I’ll never forget that classroom … I hope we all stay in touch for life after this.”
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