Students, Professors Shelter in Glass Box
One of the more precarious lockdown locations highlights the need for campus-wide training

Trapped inside the glass entryway to the Stemmons Plaza entrance of Tucker Hall, two professors and two students hunkered down as they awaited updates from the university’s emergency alert system in the late afternoon of Wednesday, November 1, 2023.

The shelter-in-place order — which Washington and Lee University President William Dudley has since said responded to “an anonymous communication alleging a general threat to campus” — filled the community with fear and confusion.

Rumors ranged from an active shooter, bomb threat, and even alleged violence sparked by a student’s experience during winter-term registration; nothing of the sort actually transpired for the nearly four hours in which campus life came to a halt.

The Ring-tum Phi provided live updates on Wednesday’s event, as well as the various circumstances and anxieties students experienced as they barricaded doors, moved away from windows, and watched armed law enforcement comb buildings across campus.

Many classes had just ended as the initial 3:45 PM alert asked members of the W&L community “to shelter in place until further notice.” While many professors instructed students to remain in the classroom, people outside of academic buildings were forced to take shelter wherever they could. 

Kevin Crotty, a professor of classics who has taught at W&L since 1999, told The Spectator in an interview that he “had just dismissed a class” in Reid Hall when he checked his phone and saw the alert.

Admitting that “I’ve never experienced a lockdown before,” Crotty said that his first instinct was to return to his office in Tucker Hall. “When I came out into campus, I saw that I was really just about the only one and came to Tucker on the library side.”

The exterior door to Tucker Hall does not lock, but the glass entryway requires swipe access before entering the lobby through a set of glass doors. 

Discovering that his university card would not unlock the door, Crotty said that he “called  security and they told me that there was a lockdown and nobody could go into or out of the building. I told them I was locked out of the building, and he just kinda repeated it.”

After a colleague inside Tucker tried to open the door from the inside — to no avail — Crotty determined “I didn’t think it would be wise to go outside again and so I just stayed there and sat down.”

Soon after, two more students and a professor joined Crotty inside the glass entryway, where they sat until around 6:40 PM. By then, another class in Tucker opened their classroom door to allow students to use the restroom. They saw the trapped group and managed to open the glass door — which could not be opened hours before — and invited them to their more-fortified room.

Garrett Price, ‘24, had just left a class in the Center for Global Learning (CGL) when he saw the emergency alert. He entered Tucker because it was the closest building and because “I saw a professor through the window,” Price told The Spectator.

While both Crotty and Price felt reassured to see law enforcement on Stemmons Plaza, Price said that “We were a bit restless in that space.” 

When asked by The Spectator if they had at the time considered their vulnerability in the glass room, both individuals expressed similar concern.

“I wouldn’t say that I felt safe, because it was clear to me that I was not in a safe place. On the other hand,” Crotty said, “I really could not convince myself that there was any lifely danger.”

“I was not too nervous … because I knew I was in good hands,” Price said. He was confident that police “would have done something to obstruct someone before they got into the building.”

Still, Crotty and Price believe that their situation would have improved had they known more information.

“I was able to leave Reid. I don’t know what that was about,” Crotty said. “Nobody stopped me and it just seemed perfectly normal and natural to leave Reid.” 

While Crotty agreed that educational training for faculty would be helpful, “even short of that, I would have appreciated a sense of knowing that they really do lock every door.”

Like most students, Price underwent lockdown drills before college, but even he admits that “What I know about [lockdown] procedures are limited.”

Price also thought that “professor[s] should be trained,” so that “at least one person in the room” knows what to do.

He was not opposed to students sitting through a training session, either. 

After a rise in college shootings, an increasing number of universities require mandatory training programs for incoming freshmen. 

While W&L does not facilitate any such awareness program for faculty or students, The Spectator found a page on the W&L website titled “Run, Hide, Fight”; the page details “a three pronged approach” suggested by federal law enforcement “[i]n the case of a violent incident such as an active shooter.”

The page also links a 9-minute video training presented by The Ohio State University Department of Public Safety.

Following the November 13, 2022 shootings that left three students dead at the University of Virginia, their Department of Safety and Security produced a video championing the same Run-Hide-Fight model. According to a UVA spokesperson, “Students will be required to complete the active attacker training and response module every two years,” The Daily Progress reported.

The Spectator is not aware of any similar measures being taken at W&L, though some faculty members have suggested it to the Department of Public Safety.