After UNC-Pembroke held a drill last year to test the university’s response to a shooter on campus, school officials decided that sending text messages to alert students wasn’t enough warning.
The school has since put in place sirens to use in the event of emergencies, said McDuffie Cummings Jr., UNC-Pembroke’s police chief.
“We learned that we had to take our notification system up one more step,” Cummings said.
Shooting Drills
The UNC system has asked all schools to conduct emergency preparedness drills to test responses to active shooters on campus.
Five schools — UNC-Pembroke, Elizabeth City State University, UNC-Greensboro, N.C. A&T State University and Western Carolina University — have already conducted shooter drills.
The remaining schools are expected to conduct drills by the end of June. UNC-Chapel Hill will conduct its drill on Wednesday.
Fourteen schools have conducted “tabletop” exercises, which bring together school officials, local law enforcement, emergency staff and others to review participants’ roles in reacting to a shooter on campus.
