More on the shooting at Umpqua Community College

From The Oregonian:
College shooting: Alert systems failed, faculty members say

excerpt:

Emergency alert systems at Umpqua Community College may have failed to warn students and faculty of a shooter on campus Thursday. Three associate professors told The Oregonian/OregonLive they did not receive emergency notifications that were supposed to show up on computers connected to a college network. Two of the three also said they were enrolled in a campus alert system that should have sent them a text message, but they never received one....
...There's no way to know whether proper alerts would have saved lives or prevented injuries as gunman Christopher Harper-Mercer opened fire in a writing class, ultimately killing nine and injuring nine more in a 10-minute rampage. The faculty members said the only warning they received was an email that a secretary appears to have sent manually as police began arriving on campus....
...Blackwood said he was teaching a lab Thursday morning with a half-dozen students crowded around his computer when another student came up and told him to check his email. "The emergency notification that should have popped up on all the computers did not occur," Blackwood said. He also checked his phone for texts. Nothing. "The second notification system, which would have been sent to all students and all faculty who registered for the emergency notification system — as everyone is encouraged to do — did not function either," he said. Blackwood saw Frazer's warning email and concluded that "the other two systems had not fired." He interrupted the class next door, where the professor was lecturing with her computer projected onto a classroom screen. No alert there, either...

From the Los Angeles Times:

Death in a classroom: Oregon shooter targeted his English class

excerpt:

The gunman who carried out the deadly attack at Umpqua Community College was a student in the same class as many of his nine victims: Writing 115, also called Introduction to Expository Writing.

Authorities identified the dead on Friday and they, as well as friends and family, shared details about those lost.Some were teenagers, trying to make their way toward four-year colleges. The oldest was their teacher, Larry Levine, 67, an assistant professor of English who taught part time at Umpqua for many years so he could pursue his other passions – fly fishing on the Umpqua River and writing about the outdoor world he loved...

Levine’s colleague, Andrew Madaus, who shared an office with him and sometimes taught the same class, said Writing 115 was an entry-level course some students were required to take before they could take a higher-level course for which they could earn college credit. “It’s basically for the students who did not quite test well enough or get into an argumentative writing class,” Madaus said. “It’s a refresher on compare and contrast, definition essays. We give you a word, a concept, maybe a science term or something, and you do basic research and say what it means.”

Madaus said the layout and limited sight lines around Snyder Hall would have made it fairly easy for a gunman to enter without being initially detected. He said it was unlikely the gunman knew Levine well or could have had enough experience with him to be frustrated by something that happened in class.

 “He was just so easy-going,” he said of Levine. “He’s not the kind of teacher that drives you nuts because they’re always in your face. He was perfect for that lower-level class because he had that extra patience. I just don’t know how we’re going to move forward.”

Levine also taught higher levels of writing, including creative writing, which Madaus said he had particularly enjoyed teaching....

 Since Sandy Hook, there has been nearly one school shooting a week

Click title above to see interactive map.

excerpt:

There have been 142 shootings on school in the U.S. since 20 children and six adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. on Dec. 14, 2012 according to Everytown For Gun Safety, an advocacy group. Incidents were classified as school shootings when a firearm was discharged inside a school building or on campus, as documented in news accounts. This includes events that did not target students or teachers, like suicides, misfires and other activity. Incidents in which guns were brought into schools but not fired, or were fired off school grounds after having been possessed in schools, were not included.

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