Cottey has plan in place for variety of emergencies

Thursday morning, an incident at Pittsburg State University called attention to the reality that some sort of campus violence can happen in a small campus in a small community. Officials at Cottey College in Nevada say they're prepared to spring into action and have plans in place to address a variety of emergencies.

In November, several Cottey staff members, along with emergency personnel from the city of Nevada and Vernon County, participated in a table top exercise on emergency procedures and what staff members would do in several simulated situations on the Cottey campus.

"Cottey has had an emergency/crisis communication plan for the past few years, but this was an opportunity for us to sit down as a group with emergency personnel and work out our plan," said Cottey College Public Information Director Steve Reed.

"One of the exercises involved what we would do if there were someone on campus discharging a weapon," Reed said.

The first action Cottey would take would be to secure the students' safety. This would be done through a shelter-in-place order. Neale Swarnes and the physical plant staff and housekeeping staff would use their radios and cell phones to make sure all campus buildings had the order. In addition, all calls -- announcements over the loudspeaker system -- would be done in each residence hall. Cottey's buildings are on a keycard system, so the school could also immediately lock down the buildings.

The president of the college, any of her council members, and Swarnes have the authority to authorize that shelter in place order. At the same time this is going on, the Nevada police would be contacted. The police would be in charge of the campus and crime scene and would be the only ones with the authority to call off the shelter in place order. Once the police had communicated that to Cottey, campus personnel would then communicate that information to the campus community that it was safe for them to leave their building.

For details of Thursday's incident at PSU, see the accompanying story in today's edition of the Nevada Daily Mail.