River Trash Piles Up; Upstream Effort Helps

By Carla M. Collado
Staff Writer

The day after a shooter killed five people and injured 16 others in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University last week, all students, faculty and staff at California State University, Long Beach, received an e-mail from President F. King Alexander assuring them of their safety and informing them of a new emergency response system on campus.

In his e-mail on Friday, Alexander said that events such as the NIU shootings raise questions about preparedness on the CSULB campus — which enrolls more than 37,000 students — should something similar happen there.

“I want to assure you that the university has policies and procedures in place should we need to respond to a situation here,” Alexander wrote, “and we are continuing to work to provide additional layers to assist your individual safety.”

He also announced that the university recently installed an Emergency Notification System on the CSULB campus. During an emergency, the system allows university officials to alert the campus community by sending voice messages to cell phones and land lines, text messages to cell phones, PDAs (personal digital assistants) and other devices, written messages to e-mail accounts and messages to TTY/TDD receiving devices.

Alexander reminded students to make sure that the university has their most current contact information.

The president told students, faculty and staff that the university also has a dedicated Emergency Information Web site (http://emergency.csulb.edu) that can be updated and activated with important information during a crisis to alert the CSULB community until the situation is over.

He reminded them that they can do their own part in keeping the campus safe by reporting individuals or situations that may not appear to be right by calling the university police at 985-4101. All 911 calls on campus also are directed to the university police, Alexander added.

“There are no guarantees that senseless events will not happen at our campus,” Alexander wrote. “What we can do is prepare ourselves as well as possible. CSULB takes this responsibility very seriously.”.