By Wilma A. Benjamin Drakes and Constance Freeman
Trinity Times Correspondents
The morning of April 13, 2023, began quietly at Trinity Washington University, but an alert of a reported active shooter on campus that appeared on Jessica R’s phone became a life-changing experience for the Trinity senior.
Jessica was attending an independent study course in Trinity’s Main Hall when the campus security lockdown notification came in shortly before 10 a.m., and she said the professor was reluctant to discontinue her lecture, even when all three students in the room showed her the alerts on their phones.
Eventually, Jessica – who did not want to give her full name in case there were repercussions for discussing a professor’s inaction during the alert – said the frightened students shut the classroom door, followed the instructions on the lockdown alert and two of them hid in a closet until an “all clear” alert followed around 10:10 a.m., when it was revealed the police had swept through the campus and determined it was a false alarm.
The reported inaction of this professor was contrary to Trinity protocols during such lockdown alerts at a university that treats gun violence as more than a security risk, but as a public health crisis, and Jessica said the experience left her terrified and confused.
Though this was a false alarm, Trinity administration officials acknowledge that the impact on students, staff and faculty can be as harmful as real gun violence on campus and they are treating it as an exercise in ensuring campus safety, as well as in encouraging mental health follow up and gun-control activism.
The active shooter hoax at Trinity, The Catholic University of America, and several other colleges throughout the U.S. that morning, are called “swatting” – in reference to the “SWAT teams” of armed police that respond to fake calls and potentially endanger innocent bystanders.
The Educator’s School Safety Network recorded more than 446 false active shooter reports at U.S. schools and universities during the 2022-2023 school year, which comprises 63% of all the violent incidents that occurred in schools that year, including 60 guns found and 55 shootings.
There were nearly 19,000 willful, malicious, or accidental gun deaths in the U.S. in 2023 and 656 mass shootings, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
The American Medical Association adopted a policy in 2016 calling gun violence in the U.S. “a public health crisis requiring a comprehensive public health response and solution.”
Washington’s Metropolitan Police reported 274 homicides in 2023, the District of Columbia’s highest number of homicides in 20 years and up 35% since 2022.
Gun violence has been embedded into American society, making it impossible to ignore the impact on communities and victims, said Trinity’s President Patricia McGuire, who has publicly called on elected officials at the local, state, and national level to act in regulating guns and banning assault weapons to help reduce the growing number of gun-related deaths in the U.S.
At Trinity, McGuire said that she, Vice President for Student Affairs Karen Gerlach, and Campus Safety Chief Andrea Glascoe are part of a team that works closely with partners at The Catholic of University of America and Howard University to ensure safety measures on and off campus.
Trinity spends more than $1.5 million a year on campus safety – which includes 24-hour security officers at all entry levels, shuttle services to and from the Brookland Metro Station for staff and students, and an extensive surveillance system.
The university also has a zero-tolerance policy for any weapon on campus, meaning Trinity is a no-gun zone, prohibiting weapons in any car on school grounds, in a gym bag, in an office drawer, or in any other place, clearly listed in the college’s Student Code of Conduct.
“It is (Gerlach’s) chief responsibility to ensure the health, safety, and welfare of everyone on campus,” McGuire told Trinity Times. “And this is something she works on daily as a team.”
That includes the daily safety operations on campus, ensuring instruction for safety is carry out, and providing students with access to resources and support, Gerlach said.
Officials in the university’s counseling program actively encouraged members of the school’s community to seek them out last summer, after students, staff and faculty were confronted with the July 5, 2023, shooting death of a Kentucky school teacher, who had been staying on Trinity’s campus while attending a conference.
When gun violence happens within a university community, students, staff, and faculty can be impacted emotionally and possibly traumatically by this occurrence, said Lunae Oprea, associate professor of Counseling in Trinity’s School of Nursing and Health Professions.
Members of Trinity’s graduate counseling program, along with Trinity’s Health and Wellness Center, can provide a support system for students during times like these, she said.
Ariana Roland – who was a Trinity graduate student on the day of the April “swatting” incident – wasn’t on campus when the active-shooter alerts went out and didn’t find out about it until she read email messages several hours later.
Now, as a mental health professional, she supports gun violence awareness in all schools and college campuses, and Trinity has made additional efforts to get more students enrolled in Trinity’s Emergency Communication, which they can subscribe to by texting “trinitydcalerts” to “866-925-2949.”
Trinity held a Town Hall during the summer of 2023 entitled “Changing the Narrative on Gun Violence: A Community-Driven Approach,” and this past October the university also conducted a Campus Safety Week, requiring all professors to provide shelter-in-place protocols to students in their classes.
In treating gun violence as a public health crisis, university officials have been encouraging students to involve themselves in the growing student gun-control activism in the U.S.
“Young people have always been change-agents in America,” said Joshua Wright, associate professor of Global Affairs at Trinity. “If you look back at the Civil Rights Movement and anti-Vietnam War protests of the 1960s, it was young people out in the streets marching, holding demonstrations, boycotting, and staging sit-ins that caught the media’s attention and ultimately politicians.”
Such calls for action prompted student leader Aalayah Eastmond from Team Enough, a youth-led gun violence prevention organization, to spearhead events and programs on Trinity’s campus to encourage student advocacy and activism.
“Ultimately,” McGuire said in her blog, “we must be on the front lines of insisting that this society find a way to reduce the violence and increase the opportunities to enjoy the kind of ‘life, liberty and happiness’ that we all have a right to experience.”