Following last week’s threat to members of our campus by a person in Colorado, UCLA Chancellor Gene Block has called for the creation of a task force to conduct a comprehensive review of the university’s emergency protocols for potential threats.

“UCLA is committed to protecting our community against potential threats. We are grateful that the collaborative efforts among UCPD and other law enforcement agencies led to last week’s apprehension in Colorado of an individual who threatened some members of the UCLA community,” Block said.

“We are also committed to constantly improving our protocols for responding to these emergencies and taking the opportunity to reflect on what worked well and what could be improved. To that end, I am calling for the creation of a task force, including student representatives, to conduct a comprehensive review of our current protocols for responding to potential threats and other incidents on campus.”

The task force will examine: 

  • how information about potential threats is received on the campus;
  • how threats are evaluated by UCPD and with which administrative units they collaborate;
  • how and when cross-campus leadership and key administrative and academic units are made aware of potential threats;
  • how determinations are made about how and when to notify the broader community;
  • and the effectiveness of our emergency notification processes to the community, including the BruinAlert system.

The task force, to be chaired by Stephen Yeazell, David G. Price and Dallas P. Price Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, will also be charged with recommending specific steps for improvement. Once final, their report will be shared publicly.

Source: https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/chancellor-task-force-review-ucla-emergency-protocols.

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Comment: As the image of the BruinAlert text messages shows, the initial warnings were made around midnight. The decision to shut down the campus and return to Zoom classes seems to have been made well before any actual classes were to be held. (We don't have midnight classes.) Well before classes would have been scheduled to occur, it appears that it was determined that the individual at the center of the threat was far away from campus. So, if the decision had been delayed, there would have been no need to go to the shutdown. Note that such toggling between in-person and online education is disruptive.

There is a distinction between "how determinations are made about how and when to notify the broader community" and the timing of the decision to shut down well before any actual classes might have been threatened. Let's hope the task force also considers the latter.