SUNY requires every campus to develop and maintain an emergency response plan that meets the requirements and priorities to protect life, protect critical failures and restore campus operations. 

Oswego State’s current emergency response plan is available on the Oswego State website and was last revised in June 2017.

Oswego State’s emergency response plan includes plans for attempted suicide, bomb threats, campus disturbances, hazardous material incidents, fire, medical emergency, nuclear emergency evacuations, serious injury or death and threats or acts of violence.

University Police Chief John Rossi said he does not forsee any changes to the plans in the near future.

“The only way to stop these attacks is to prevent them,” Rossi said. 

Rossi said after an incident happens in the U.S., the FBI or a private company issues an After-Action Report, which UP receives.

“We review that report with our officers and we learn from those reports,” Rossi said. “You can never be too prepared for any type of incident to occur.”

Rossi said Oswego State is very proactive when it comes to active shooters on campus. After the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, a behavioral intervention team was formed, which meets weekly. The team assists students experiencing psychological decompensation, or deterioration of their mental stability, due to the stresses of an academic environment. Seven administrators that represent different departments across campus are part of the team. 

“We try to eliminate any threats before they became too apparent,” Rossi said. “We’re able to deal with [persons of concern] by directing them to the resources they need to continue to be successful. If they are causing disruptions by violating the student code of conduct, we can take actions to eliminate them as a student through suspension or expulsion.”

The original response for an active shooter was to set up a perimeter and wait for a SWAT team.

“Active shooter response has evolved from when it first started at Columbine,” Rossi said.

Now, the coordinated response is that the first officer at the scene immediately goes in.

Oswego State UP has been training with the city of Oswego police and fire departments to become a rescue taskforce for if there was an event in Oswego High School or on the Oswego State campus.

“If there are injured people away from the hot zone, we are now trained to have two police officers and two paramedics trained in combat first aid to go in and remove those people,” Rossi said. “Our officers are extremely well trained.”

All Oswego UP officers have been to the active shooter training held in Oriskany at a Homeland Security Training Center. Officers are now being sent to team tactics, the latest training and response for these incidents.

“The college has been very supportive to our department in allowing us to backfill training,” Rossi said. “They’ve been very supportive to giving us the latest equipment we need to deal with these situations.”

Rossi said UP is capable of the initial response and handling an incident until it is resolved.

“No agency, no matter how large the police department is, can be capable of handling a mass casualty incident without outside assistance,” Rossi said. “This is why we train and value the partnerships with our outside police, fire and EMS partners.”

Jaclyn Schildkraut, an assistant professor in the department of public justice, started research more than 10 years ago after the Virginia Tech shooting because she wanted to give back and honor the victims that were lost that day.

“Doing [research] afforded me the opportunity to establish myself as a national expert, which has helped me work with the press to promote causes I believe in,” Schildkraut said.

In 10 years, Schildkraut hopes the United States has “gotten its act together” so her line of work is no longer needed.

“Sadly, I don’t expect that to be the case,” Schildkraut said. “I hope to be continuing to push forward, being a voice and advocate for change, for helping survivors and for continuing to make a difference.”

Since Schildkraut began her research, she has built up friendships with a number of individuals who have been impacted by the events. She is working on a project currently that is focusing on mass shootings survivors and recovery.

“I spent about four months interviewing 35 survivors to learn about their experiences in hopes of being able to make policy recommendations for resources for long-term recovery,” Schildkraut said.

She has also collected more than 2,000 holiday cards for children who lost relatives in the 2017 Las Vegas shooting and collected more than 1,300 cards for them for Valentine’s Day.

“I am 100 percent confident that we are able to handle anything that could occur on this campus,” Rossi said. 

Rossi recommends if someone sees something, say something.

“Every one of these suspects, when an incident occurs, there have been signs that something bad was going to happen, and nobody was notified,” Rossi said. “On our campus, we have plenty of people that can be notified.”

Graphic: Rachel Futterman | The Oswegonian