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The University of Ottawa is pledging to find better ways of communicating with students after a lockdown last week sparked concerns about the school’s emergency response.
Around 4:20 p.m. Friday, Ottawa police responded to a call about a suspicious person near the Rideau Centre mall just north of campus.
That man — who was ultimately charged with carrying a replica firearm and with mischief — then wandered onto the campus, according to police and the school.
After 5 p.m., once it confirmed information with police, the school placed its buildings on lockdown. It lifted that order a few hours later once the man was arrested.
“Acting quickly and responsibly is what helps keep people safe. Action was taken according to all available information and the university will always put safety first,” a university spokesperson said via email on Monday.
But some members of the school community have raised concerns about how the lockdown unfolded.
For example, some reported not receiving the alert from the school’s SecurUO app, according to the student union. It has also pointed out that not everyone on campus has the app.
Provost Jacques Beauvais, the school’s vice-president of academic affairs, said the university has since spoken to the union and knows students have concerns.
“We’re committed to finding more effective ways of engaging with students,” Beauvais told CBC Radio’s Ottawa Morning on Monday.
“A full review of all the communication channels possible” is underway, he added.
LISTEN | Listen to Beauvais’s full interview below:
Ottawa Morning8:19University of Ottawa looking into new ways to communicate after emergency lockdown
Provost and Vice-President of Academic Affairs for the University of Ottawa, Jacques Beauvais, addresses students concerns about how the school communicated the emergency.’Vulnerabilities in the buildings’
In addition to the app, there are also screens across campus that communicate alerts. Professor Jennifer Baker said a computer screen in her classroom did just that.
She first learned something was amiss on the way to class when either police or campus security shouted at people to get inside buildings because of a suspected “act of violent threat,” Baker said.
Baker got the attention of students who were wearing noise-cancelling headphones before making her way to her classroom where some students also didn’t know what was going on. She told them about the alert flashing on the computer screen.
Professor Jennifer Baker says the doors to her classroom didn’t lock. (Jacob Taillefer Racine/CBC)
Baker and her approximately 30 students barricaded the classroom’s doors using desks because the doors couldn’t be locked — a setup Baker said reveals “vulnerabilities in the buildings.”
“The doors should lock and they should be able to be locked manually,” she said.
Baker said she checked the SecurUO app and “it did not alert me.”
CBC News relayed Baker’s account to the university. A spokesperson said it did not have anything to add at that time.
In his Monday interview with Ottawa Morning, Beauvais said the university is looking into “all aspects” of what happened, noting that it was the first time in his memory that the school had to go into lockdown.
“We’re going to spend the week looking at all of the different facets, receiving all the communications from everyone and trying to analyze and see how we can improve all of those protocols,” he said.
An OC Transpo special constable cruiser outside of uOttawa station during the lockdown. (Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press)
The school’s “comprehensive review” will draw on feedback from students, faculty and staff, the university said via email.
Baker, who is a member of the Association of Part-Time Professors of the University of Ottawa, said she was asked earlier this decade to complete some online training about what to do in a lockdown situation.
But another union representing U of O faculty, the Association of Professors of the University of Ottawa, said its members have no specific instructions or training regarding lockdowns “other than the expectation to respect a lockdown when it is imposed.”
That union added via email that it had no comment on the lockdown.