Closer look at emergency procedures at Allan Hancock College

With the push of a button students at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria are alerted if there is an emergency on campus. It is part of the school’s ‘Rave’ alert system.

“What we try to do is get out the most up to date information as quickly as possible, we will highlight and change the alerts, but we don’t want to misinform,” said Police Chief Paul Grohowski.

He says the system is one of the ways school officials can reach as many people as possible within minutes.

“We can send one message to the various platforms, texts, emails, voice messages, RSS feed, Twitter, Facebook, and you can do it all with the push of a button,” said Public Information Officer for the college Andrew Masuda.

The system also allows school officials to narrow down the people they want to alert. For example, they can send alerts to their Santa Maria campus or their Lompoc campus depending on where the emergency is happening.

“Student and staff safety is our upmost responsibility,” said Grohowski.

“I do feel safe on campus I have been here about three years and I never feel unsafe,” said Jennifer Bombardier, a senior at the college.

She says the alert system helps her feel safe.

“It’s sad. It’s sad that students have to be concerned about that when they are trying to study, but it’s a reality we have to deal with right now,” she said.

It’s a reality that students at Ohio State University had to deal with on Monday when a student drove a car into several pedestrians and then began stabbing students with a butcher knife.

“What we have seen is because of violence we have a protocol and basically it’s run, hide, fight and if you can’t remember anything else remember that,” said Grohowski.