Scared and Unprepared, UCLA Students Improvised a Lockdown Response

Daphne Ying, a senior at the University of California at Los Angeles, was in a language class on Wednesday when she and her classmates received a text alert notifying them of police action, and then a shooting, at an engineering building on the campus. When they tried to lock down the classroom, the students realized its door swung outward and was unlockable. They brainstormed, then rigged a lock by wrapping an extension cord around the doorknob and weaving it through a chair bolted to the floor.

Photos and videos of such innovative locks spread on social media, and prompted the university to say it would investigate the problem:

#ucla when we were first trying to barricade the door after hearing the 1st shot an hour ago pic.twitter.com/HDaydt2lYG

— Daph (@whydaphnewhy) June 1, 2016

Ms. Ying described their approach as “really systematic” and said everyone appeared calm on the outside, although no one spoke in a voice louder than a hushed whisper for the two hours they were huddled inside.

As the students scrambled, the threat was already over. A former graduate student had shot and killed his former professor before turning the gun on himself, the police said. But the students didn’t know that.

Each of several UCLA students interviewed by The Chronicle said they had received no training from the university about what to do during a campus shooting. So they relied on improvisation and, remarkably, personal experience. And many college students nationwide could find themselves in similar circumstances if the ever-present, if unlikely, threat of a shooting became a reality on their campus.

On Wednesday several students had to persuade their professors to take the lockdown threat seriously, they said. Lily Lewis, a sophomore, had just received the alert on her phone when her professor walked into the classroom and began discussing the final exam she was supposed to take that morning. Students had to urge him to move the class to a different location with a lockable door. Ms. Lewis said she had never received training in a possible shooter scenario at UCLA, and gleaned safety tips mostly from social media.

“They told us to lock the doors. I think that’s, like, basic knowledge, but everything else that we knew was learned that day,” Ms. Lewis said.

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Another professor did not allow students to turn off the lights or get on the floor until an hour after the initial lockdown alert, at around 10 a.m., said Erika Monasch, a sophomore. Ms. Monasch said she had attempted to pay attention to the lecture even as rumors swirled on social media and her phone erupted with concerned texts, and she struggled to stay calm.

“I was trying to type, but my hands were shaking,” Ms. Monasch said.

While some students improvised responses, others drew on experiences they hoped they’d never have to relive.

Jeremy Peschard and Cole Anderson both lived in Santa Barbara, Calif., in 2014, when a shooter near the University of California there killed six people. (Mr. Peschard attended the university, and Mr. Anderson attended Santa Barbara City College.)

After receiving the alert, Mr. Anderson immediately locked himself in his dormitory room and said he had little idea of what was going on or how quickly the situation was escalating. His father came to pick him up, but he was too nervous to go out into the hallway, he said.

Mr. Peschard’s previous exposure to a campus shooting shaped his reaction to this one. When he was in Santa Barbara and was notified of the shooting, his initial reaction was “shock and disbelief,” he said in an email. But when he received the alert on Wednesday morning, he knew to take it seriously.

“I just never honestly thought I would have to go through it twice,” he wrote.

Miguel Rodriguez, a 32-year-old senior, lived through a previous lockdown years ago, when he worked at an elementary school in Oxnard, Calif. On Wednesday he and his professor ushered roughly 120 students out of their usual classroom, a large auditorium, and into a lockable storage facility with only one window. He guarded the door while his classmates sat, prayed, and texted in darkness while listening to helicopters hum overhead.

Mr. Rodriguez attributed his level-headedness to his previous experience with an active shooter and noticed that several of his classmates were less prepared — not turning off the ringers on their cellphones, for instance.

No Standard Training

UCLA officials did not provide information on Thursday in response to numerous Chronicle inquiries about how the university trains students to handle campus shootings. Instructions for an active-shooter scenario are listed on the Office of Emergency Management’s website at the university (although the link to a brochure on “Your Response to an Active Shooter” was broken).

William F. Taylor, president of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators, said the way campuses conduct safety training for students, staff, and faculty members varies widely by institution. While some colleges rely heavily on instructional videos taught by trained campus administrators, others use customized programs from professional safety companies that include drills and demonstrations, Mr. Taylor said.

But the vast majority of training sessions, he said, teach three principles: run, hide, fight.

“Try to get yourself away from the situation,” Mr. Taylor said. “If you can’t do that, hide. Try to secure yourself in a location where you can be safe. And then the final thing is if in fact you end up in a confrontation, where there’s no getting away and hiding, then do something.”

Fighting is only a last resort, Mr. Taylor said, but it can be the most effective way of deterring further violence. Even throwing things at a person who is trying to take aim could distract a shooter, he added.

Campus safety trainings are useful for society in a broader sense, he said, and specifically for each person who takes them.

“We’re focusing today on college campuses because of the shooting incident at UCLA,” he said. “But I would point out to you that these instances happen at movie theaters, shopping malls. They’re happening everywhere. They’re not just on college campuses, and so the education piece — teaching people to run, hide, fight, or to take those kind of actions — it doesn’t matter if they’re in a shopping mall. The same principles apply.”

Gabriel Sandoval contributed reporting to this article.