UW-Green Bay enters new year
stressing campus safety,
emergency preparedness

Within hours of the Virginia Tech shootings last April, UW-Green Bay began reviewing its safety procedures and policies.
      “When it comes to ensuring a safe campus, we have had many sensible practices in place for years,” Chancellor Bruce Shepard says. “However, the Virginia Tech tragedy showed that we must be attentive and open to new ideas.”
      Shepard immersed himself in the larger topic when Gov. Jim Doyle appointed him co-chair of Wisconsin’s task force on campus safety. The Chancellor and task force colleagues spent much of 2007 in consultation on best practices across the country.
      Some of their findings will be discussed in February, when the UW System’s new campus-by-campus security report is brought up for public review by the UW Board of Regents. On the Green Bay campus, the report details activities initiated since the Virginia Tech tragedy, including:
    • a review of UW-Green Bay’s emergency response practices and procedures;
    • an “active shooter” training exercise involving campus, city and county police;
    • information sessions on campus safety at each new freshman parent orientation;
    • distribution to all students, faculty and staff information about protocols and procedures dealing with potential violent behavior;
    • promotion of a depression screening awareness campaign.
      A summary of UW-Green Bay’s campus security initiatives may be viewed online at www.uwgb.edu/
chancellor/reports/07security.htm.