After FSU shooting, Florida universities to look at campus security

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The universities will share their best practices at a safety summit held in October.

Following a mass shooting at Florida State University, the Florida Board of Governors is requiring all state universities to review their campus security measures.
Universities must assess if classroom doors can be locked from the inside and if windows can be covered during lockdowns.
A safety summit will be held in October for universities to share best practices and identify areas for improvement.

The state panel that oversees Florida’s public universities is asking them to review their security measures this summer in response to the mass shooting that happened on the Florida State University campus in April.

While on lockdown during the shooting, many FSU students and teachers said they attempted to secure the doors to their classrooms but could not lock them from the inside.

At a Florida Board of Governors meeting on May 15, State University System Chancellor Ray Rodrigues said presidents of each state university were asked to work with their staff to assess campus safety and the ability to hold a lockdown drill.

Specifically, the questions to be addressed are: Can classroom doors be locked from the inside? And, if there are windows in those doors, can they be covered or otherwise protected?

The universities will share their best practices at a safety summit to be held in October, Rodrigues said, to identify any common concerns or improvements needed. He praised FSU police for their swift response and called it “nothing short of amazing.”

“This could have been a much, much worse tragedy than it was. It’s obviously tragic to have students shot and to have any loss of life, but the quick response of the FSU campus police prevented this from being much, much, much worse than it could have been,” Rodrigues said.

A grand jury indicted Phoenix Ikner, 20, with two counts of first-degree murder and seven counts of attempted murder, which includes two people he allegedly fired at but missed during the April 17 rampage on FSU campus.

Ikner, who was “neutralized” three minutes and three seconds into his attack by FSU police, was arrested by the Tallahassee Police Department and booked into the Wakulla County Detention Facility; his stepmother is a Leon County sheriff’s deputy.

FSU: Some doors in classroom buildings lock, but only on outside

An FSU spokesperson has said that classroom doors in the HCB building, near the student union where two were killed, did automatically lock, but from the outside.

“During a lockdown situation, like on April 17, doors in the HCB Building lock immediately as they are part of our electronic locking system that is centrally managed,” FSU spokesperson Amy Farnum-Patronis told CNN.

Robert Morales, 57, an FSU dining coordinator, and Tiru Chabba, 45, an executive from Aramark, were shot and killed, and five other students were shot and injured. Those victims were discharged from the hospital five days later, Rodrigues said.

FSU-affiliated colleagues of the board did not attend the meeting May 15 because they were in another board meeting, said BOG chair Brian Lamb. He asked the board to continue to support FSU President Richard McCullough and the university community.

“It’s important,” Lamb said. “Our friends, in many ways, are still grieving, and we need to be supportive of them through difficult times.”

Ana Goñi-Lessan, state watchdog reporter for the USA TODAY Network – Florida, can be reached at agonilessan@gannett.com.