Carrying on Campus? | Video

Sarahbeth Ackerman | 1/24/2013

With all of the recent shootings on college campuses across the country, we wanted to see what kind of gun policy is in place at Minot State University. "Reality is, when you consider what’s going on college campuses nationwide, shooter scenarios, bomb threats, floods, natural disasters, these are not potential threats, these are things that have happened and will happen," said Brian Voisy, Vice President of Finance and Administration at Minot State University.

Security at Minot State University said they can`t afford not to have their students prepared if there was an emergency. "Every emergency situation is slightly different. We have an emergency operations procedure manual where we are going to know in general what needs to be done, but what really counts is having qualified experts on campus to tell the rest of us what to do," said Voisy.

While bringing concealed weapons is not permitted on school grounds, Minot State security is taking these recent situations very seriously, so they can prevent these types of tragedies on their own campus.

"Basically, with a shooter on campus, it`s really hard for me to sit here and say, ‘We would do this, or we would do that.’ There are different scenarios. It could be a lockdown situation, where everybody is locked into the building and if the shooter was near that building, it could be an evacuation," said William Chew, Superintendent of Security.

One thing campus security is doing to enhance their system, is to make it mandatory for all students to be connected through their cell phone, just in case there is an emergency so they can be notified 24/7.

"If you consider a lockdown situation, that would be our prior mechanism, for letting people know to stay in the building or letting building representatives know that the building should be locked," said Voisy.

With this new mandatory policy, the school will have the option to send notifications directly to the student’s phone for an immediate alert.

The State Board determined the university needs three more officers on campus for 24 hour security. If the initiative is passed to the Governor`s office for consideration, MSU could add the additional officers this summer.

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