Editor, The Auburn Plainsman:
After giving Auburn University administrators ample time to inform you of a potentially dangerous situation on campus Monday, March 9, 2009, I have decided to tell you myself.
This letter is intended to:
— Inform the Auburn Family of events that happened on our campus.
— Inform you of the official Auburn University response and their current position on the situation.
At 4 p.m., three young men not registered for the course entered a political science classroom.
They sat at the back of the room and began asking questions and making comments about guns, the war in Iraq, and similar topics.
They were not sitting together but were sitting strategically around the back of the room.
The students were very uncomfortable and afraid. One student left the class.
Another student reported being too afraid to even turn to look at them.
Students were sending text messages back and forth about their odd behavior.
Later, some students were driven home by the police for their own safety.
Two of the three strangers left the room during a break in the class.
Two guys tried to block the third from exiting while banging on the door and making obscene gestures to the class.
The professor tried to stop them, but they fled to a vehicle whose driver was waiting for them outside on the concourse.
The police were called immediately at this point.
Students in the class gave reports of one individual having a black backpack.
The individuals were eventually apprehended at a location off campus.
It was discovered that they were soldiers from Fort Benning who had been drinking at a local bar and came to campus specifically to cause a disruption although their full intentions have not been released by the authorities.
Meanwhile, many of you attended classes in the building or the surrounding area without even knowing this was going on.
I e-mailed Dean of Students Johnny Green to ask what happened in this situation.
I asked why there was no AU ALERT sent, what was the resolution of this instance, and why students were not informed at any point in time?
Dr. Green had an almost indifferent attitude about the whole thing. The official University position is that there were no mistakes made.
Per Dean Green’s response, it can be inferred that this is an occurrence we could expect at anytime.
Just don’t expect any notice, response, or informing process to occur.
AU ALERT will only be used if there is an “imminent threat of violence”.
It is not exactly clear what this means.
This apparently does not include drunk, armed, threatening soldiers entering your classrooms.
Many students feel that Auburn University responded inappropriately.
We have all seen incidents start like this end in tragedy at campuses such as Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois.
Fortunately, the situation did not escalate this time. Hopefully, this letter will serve as a wake-up call that the University cannot keep its students in the dark about issues on their campus.
Hopefully, we can use this as a learning experience to retool a broken system.
Hopefully, the response will be different next time. That is up to you.
We deserve to know what the system is designed to do.
How does AU ALERT work and what can we expect in the future?
Please contact your Dean to seek resolution to this process.
Demand transparency and action from your administration!
Matt Pettit
graduate student,
Public Administration
If someone is going to come into anywhere to cause harm...they aren't going to make a "show" out of themselves. This sounds like a prank to me.
Speaking of AU Alerts, it's slow as hell and needs to be revised. Tornado warnings get to me after the damn storms are gone.
The University must be held responsible. The article is on point. If the administration at V. Tech had acted quicker they may have been able to save lives. In this day and age it is more important to be safe than sorry. We only know that they were not there to harm people because the Police arrested them a couple hours later. At the time of the incident it was unknown what their intentions were. True it turned out to not be a big deal, but the administration did not know that at the time. The "What If's" are important in this instance and should be considered. Looking back on it there was no need for an AU Alert but the university and the administration did not know that at the time.
As a parent spending thousands of dollars to send my child to this university I want to know they are safe and I should be able to assume that soliders from another state will not be randomly roaming the halls and disrupting their classes.
The proper action would have been to tell students to stay put until we knew what these intruders who were possibly armed were up to. Ensuring student, faculty, staff, and visitors safety should be paramount.
How about this, Matt. Demand TRANSPARENCY from the POTUS first, like he said he'd offer to us, which we haven't seen yet.
And stop being a whiny sissy.