Academic Senate responds to shooting at MSU

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Lauren Rice
The CMU Panel on Safety gives a presentation to the academic senate during their meeting in French Auditorium on Tuesday Feb. 14.

Members of the Academic Senate started Tuesday's meeting with a moment of silence for the three students killed and five injured by an active shooter at Michigan State University Monday night.

They moved on to review safety protocols, examine available resources for students interested in mental health support and approved a series of new undergraduate programs. 

Response to MSU

President Bob Davies started his joint report with the Provost Nancy Mathews by addressing the deaths at MSU.

“I know many of our faculty, staff and students have friends and colleagues, as well as family members, at Michigan State University,” Davies said. “It has also been several years since our campus weathered a campus shooting, and some of you may be reliving those frightening experiences again today.”

Davies encouraged students and staff to take the time that they need to process. 

“If you need help, please do take advantage of resources available and above all, know that I’m here to support each and every one of you,” Davies said. 

He added that students who need to miss a class for mental health concerns should communicate that need to their professors and faculty. Davies said that there are both formal and informal resources available to students in need of support. 

“We have the counseling center, we have social workers,” Davies said. “We will have the rooms that will still be available for students to go to and talk to individuals. The informal resources are your friends, if you feel comfortable talking to your friends, talking to individuals you have classes with. We are all in this together.”

Davies said that the last incident at CMU was March 2, 2018, when a student shot and killed his parents in one of the residential buildings before going on the run. 

“As mentioned by (CMU Police Chief Larry) Klaus, they had police officers on the scene very, very quickly,” Davies said. “And no other shots were fired. But again, it was a very, very dramatic, tragic event that occurred on campus. Whenever these types of things happen, it’s heartbreaking.”

Safety Protocols 

The CMU Panel on Safety also gave a presentation during Tuesday’s meeting, where they explained how faculty should respond to different encounters with students that have the potential to escalate later. 

  • Emergency situation: call the CMU police at (989) 774-3081, or 911
  • Code of Conduct Violations: call the Office of Student Conduct at (989) 774-1345
  • A student needs help with academics or mental health: call CMU CARES at (989) 774-3346
  • If in doubt, call the Office of Student Affairs at (989) 774- 3346

Presenters encouraged students and staff to download the "Rave Guardian" campus safety app, which is available in the App Store and the Google Play Store.

They said the app is similar to the Central Alert system, but provides more information to users about individual emergency responses and options to report incidents.

More information on emergency preparedness on campus is available on the emergency management webpage. 

Undergraduate Programs

The Senate approved a series of undergraduate certificates: 

  • Database development 
  • Web development
  • Interdisciplinary integration of science, technology and engineering (InSciTE) 
  • Cloud computing
  • Mobile Computing
  • Network Administration

They also voted to institute two new undergraduate minor programs.

  1. Teaching Mathematics Grades 5-9
  2. Social and Criminal Justice

The Academic Senate meets bi-weekly on Tuesdays from 3:30 to 5 p.m. in the French Auditorium. Livestreams and recordings of each meeting are available on the senate website.

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