Because graduating without incident is too much to ask for

I came as close today as I am comfortable with to an "active shooter" situation on campus.

Before I freak anyone out, NO, there was not an active shooter on my campus. This was not ascertained immediately, however.

I was not supposed to be on campus today, but scheduled several meetings at work and needed to go in. The meetings wrapped without much incident and I stayed at work to deal with a few of the things that were raised during the last meeting. The window in my office faces West and I noticed a helicopter was circling and hovering above campus. Around 5 pm this is normal given the 290 Expressway runs parallel to campus, but at 3 pm it was just really weird. About the 6th or 7th time the helicopter circled into my vision I was wondering what the heck was going on.

In pops a student from Undergraduate Student Government, whose offices are located down the hall from mine. "Hey guys. Just thought you might want to know that we just got an email telling us there was gunfire reported on campus. It's also on the homepage. Ok, bye!!!"

Sure enough, across campus from me in the Student Services Building the sounds of gunfire had been reported. Campus and Chicago police responded and evacuated the building and did room-by-room searches for a gunman or signs of gun play. Nothing.

Well, that's not entirely true. There was a shot fired, but after the initial reports. It seems one of the campus police officers that responded (the same campus police who boast being fully capable because they are trained with state police at their academy) accidentally discharged a round into the floor while conducting the search. This is easily the most awesome part of the story.

Since I was not supposed to be at work anyway I packed up and headed home when I heard about possible gunshots. Better to be safe than sorry. Getting home was a bit interesting given the building in question is two blocks from my apartment. The police had traffic blocked off 5 to 6 blocks deep in all directions around the building, but I just had to slip through the crowd of evacuated employees and students and continue on my way home.

I doubt they will ever figure out what sound prompted the calls, but at least Chicago PD and UIC police had a chance to deploy their "active shooter" plans in a real yet non-threatening situation. I hope they learned a lot!!! The key, I think, is that UIC touts their text-message alert system that they encourage everyone to sign up for the minute they become students. They have my number, as well as thousands others, and are supposed to send an alert out whenever there is a chance of a threat on campus. That totally did not happen today. Yeah, I know in the end there was not a real threat, but they did not know that immediately. At best, an alert should have gone out saying something along the lines of "Report of possible gunshots fired on campus" and then issued instructions. An email alert to the entire student body should have also been issued, which did not happen.

2 months and 2 days until I graduate.

Love!

~g