In the wake of events at our sister school MSU, concerns about campus safety have come to the forefront of discussion among our students, faculty, and staff at MTU. Our hearts go out to the victims, their families, and the community affected by this violence, and we encourage people to seek emotional support if needed. The Center for Student Health and Well-Being can be called at (906) 487-2538, and you can call Dial Help at 800-562-7622 or text at (906) 356-3337.
In case of an emergency, MTU has many resources on safety procedures, and risk prevention services. In 2017, MTU was named the safest college campus in the country. If Public Safety were to be alerted to a threat, they have the ability to send out a campus-wide text, email, and voicemail, that would tell people where the event was occurring, and what steps they should take to protect themselves. This is important as students, faculty, staff, and admin are responsible for protecting themselves until police and the active shooter response team can arrive on the scene.
In an interview with Brian Cadwell, the Chief of Public Safety, he expressed that they make continuous updates to their content, and will be updating their active shooter video shortly. This content can be found on the Public Safety website at https://www.mtu.edu/publicsafety/. Public Safety also offers on-demand active shooter training, available to students, organizations, and workplaces. Public Safety highly recommends taking these pieces of training.
Brian Cadwell stated, “Every time this situation happens, an active shooter somewhere in the country, we’ll look at what happened there, what the response was, how it worked, how it matches up with what we are doing, and if we have to change something we will…We want to be able to provide the best response in the event that something happens. Please feel free to reach out to us anytime. What we’ve done here is work really hard for years to have a good relationship with the students, faculty, and staff.”
If you see something on campus that might be suspicious, call Public Safety. The best place to reach them is their phone number, 906-487-2216. There is also an anonymous tip line for less urgent emergencies, which can be found at https://www.mtu.edu/tips/.
