NEIU has put in place the Emergency Management Team. The team includes nearly every department of the university into a cohesive group so that, in case of an emergency, everybody is communicating efficiently and properly. The group also goes through emergency training and meets on a regular basis to discuss safety issues, such as equipment and method upgrades.
“We developed an Emergency Management Team and this Emergency Management Team is comprised of administrators and administrative offices across the university, whether it be us [Public Safety], Facilities Management, the provosts, Student Affairs, Administrative Affairs, communication, dealing with computers and telephones, Health Services, or the counseling services, so you get the idea just about everybody in the university is represented on this team,” said Chief Jim Lyon, Director of Public Safety.
Lyon stated in June of 2007 “the University Police Department here is part of the International Association of Campus of Law Enforcement Administrators (IACLEA). As part of that we were able to get a Department of Homeland Security grant to have incident command training [at NEIU]. We had the training here in the Student Union and the administrators attended that class.”
The class takes place over three days. When it was held at NEIU, it incorporated administrators at colleges across the country. “It’s about if an incident occurred, how the university is going to handle this incident. Rather than just putting stuff on paper, you have to actively practice it,” Lyon said.
Lieutenant Paul Krusynski, a NEIU police officer, teaches the incident command class for the IACLEA. He was recently at the University of Massachusetts teaching the class. “We are hoping to bring the class back in a couple of months over the summer,” Lyon said.
The Emergency Management Team is looking into a primary communication device. This would be a loud speaker system that will allow a quick campus-wide announcement of an emergency and instruction on what action a person should take, said Erika Krehbiel of NEIU Public Relations and the Emergency Management Team.
“We have had two vendors come in to give us demonstrations on their emergency communications devices,” Lyon said.
“Now they are taking our site plan and giving us a price quote to see what it is going to cost to cover our campus. Then we need to look at that and figure out where we are going to get the money to purchase the system,” Lyon said.
Student Peter Michalczyk has taken a pro-active position in finding funding for such projects. He took the steps to have a referendum placed on the current ballot for SGA elections. The referendum proposes a $3 student fee that will be used for safety projects. The fee will be structured similar to the Green Fee that passed last year in which a committee will decide on where the money should be spent.
The current system for immediate response is “going to be from a human response. It is going to be from our police officers going out and notifying people along with the Parking Office and Facilities Management. That’s what is going to happen right now,” Lyon said.
“The Emergency Management Team has taken this on a two-layered approach. The first thing is going to be the primary communication device. That’s going to be when an immediate emergency is happening and we need to get notification out immediately. Second approach is text messaging and e-mail blasts,” Lyon said. The e-mail notification is currently in place. It is known as University Announcements sent to NEIU e-mail account. Text messages are still under review.