By Kimberly Wethal

Nov. 11, 2015

Faculty “are not helpless.”

That’s the message UW-Whitewater Police Services Department Officer Kelsey Servi’s gave to faculty and staff in attendance at the Active Shooter Training seminar last Wednesday afternoon.

The seminar focused on the steps of disaster response, ways to avoid chaotic situations and what the options are for faculty if they were to be presented with an active shooter situation.

“I think it’s important for everyone, regardless of it being a workplace or a school,” Servi said.

Servi presented the seminar to about 30 faculty and staff members.

“Mentally showing people the different options that they have available to them in a crisis-type situation is huge.”

Servi said college campuses are different from K-12 schools, because many of the students in college classes are over the age of 18 and are considered adults, therefore faculty are not in a position to stay in classrooms or other areas with students to protect them. The only exception is the Children’s Center on campus, which deals with children under the age of five who need guidance, Servi said.

For financial aid department faculty member Jennie Milski, the amount of violence occurring on college campuses sparked her interest in the seminar.

“It’s really nice for a group to be aware on how to handle a situation like that,” Milski said. “I just learned some tactics that I probably otherwise would have never thought of that [Servi] shared.”

The emphasis of Servi’s presentation was not to know how to prevent active shooters (because there’s no cookie-cutter demographic for one, and they can’t be reasoned with, she said), but rather knowing the proper way to react when placed in the middle of a situation.

She recommends looking at the situation in a series of steps: your first resort should be to avoid the situation altogether by leaving the area, your second being a way to deny an assailant access to your location through barricades and your last option being to defend yourself against them using anything available to you.

It’s why Servi says “mental scripting” your action plan and knowing your surroundings is something she “stands behind it 100 percent” saying it’s important for everyone on campus to have a thought-out action plan before imagining being placed in an active shooter situation.

“[It’s] getting people to think about, ‘well, what would I do? What can I do? What will I do?’” Servi said. “Do something.”