ECSU's mock emergency drill scares some who were unaware of plan

CO
Posted: 2008-02-27 18:52:47

Last Friday, an intruder entered a classroom in Moore Hall at Elizabeth City State University and pointed what appeared to be a gun at assistant professor Jingbin Wang.

The man ordered students in Wang's American foreign policy class to line up against a wall and threatened to kill the student with the lowest grade-point average.

"I was prepared to die," Wang recalled this week.

Ten minutes after the siege began, police stormed the class and subdued the intruder. His weapon, it turned out, was red and plastic -- a fake. So was the entire incident.

Anthony Brown, vice chancellor for student affairs, says the university -- in the northeast corner of the state -- was testing its response to shootings that have shaken campuses around the country. "The intent was not to frighten them, but to test our system, and also to test the response of the security," Brown said.

The drill was conducted eight days after a gunman stormed a Northern Illinois University classroom, killing five before turning the gun on himself.

Brown said students, staff and faculty were notified five days in advance that a drill would take place. The word, he said, went out via e-mail and text messages.

Not everyone got the word.

At 1:31 p.m. on Friday, e-mail and text messages kicked off the drill with an announcement: "This is a test. ECSU is holding a test drill where an armed intruder will enter a room in Moore Hall and be detained by campus police."

The mock intruder, a campus police officer, carried a red plastic model gun, according to a university news release.

Wang, who teaches history and political science, said Tuesday in a telephone interview he was having a class discussion when a man came to the door and said he wanted to talk.

"Suddenly the man pointed the gun at me," he said.

Wang, who is Chinese, said guns are not allowed in his native country and he did not know whether the gun was real. "I saw the gun but didn't have too much time to think about that," he said. "Everyone thought it was real."

Wang said some students thought the gun was fake, but they were not sure. "I was the guy who was feeling the gun on my back," he said.

After 10 minutes, the class heard people talking outside the door, and campus police rushed in. "Even after this was over, nobody explained it," Wang said.

He said colleagues told him students in another class blocked a door with a table and chair -- just as students did at Virginia Tech last April when 32 students were killed by a gunman.

During ECSU's drill, some students sent text messages to their parents, Wang said. Another staffer told Wang that students said they were prepared to jump out of a window.

University Chancellor Willie Gilchrist said in a statement that the drill was a learning experience.

"Unfortunately we learned lessons from frightened students that result when live scenarios are carried out," he said. "However, we want our campus to be ready in case of such an event."

University officials apologized this week to Wang. They also offered counseling to faculty and students.