Jan. 25, 2016
Kyle Guthrie
[email protected]
Over winter break, students received an e-mail and text notification regarding an armed robbery on campus.
Tim Stoecklein, program director of Emergency Management, said that Public Safety still monitors for campus closure conditions during the break.
“It was essentially a ‘craigslist type meeting’ to sell some items that just went bad,” Stoecklein explained.
“Neither of the groups were associated or affiliated with the campus. This was just one of those things where UCCS is a prominent location, and easy to find for both parties and they were just going to meet here…but in this case, it went bad.”
Stoecklein added that the two suspects fled the scene; they were not affiliated with the school in any way.
During the winter interim term Public Safety receives calls from faculty, staff and families asking if they close campus for interim classes due to weather.
“We are absolutely aware of the time of day, the amount of folks, and the special events on campus…and those get factored into that decision making process,” said Stoecklein.
“We don’t want people to think we are forgetting about them.”
Stoecklein explained that the system is reserved for true emergency situations, which rules out notifications for most weather conditions.
“(The alert system) does not send weather watch, advisory, or warning information,” Stoecklein said. “The reason being is that we want to save that alert system for ‘need to take action now’ type items.”
Public Safety is one of the offices responsible for helping in the closure decision making process.
“We are one cog in the wheel. I’m feeding forecast information conditions and anything else I am aware of in terms of closures and conditions to (UCCS Police) Chief (Brian) McPike,” he said. “Then he has conversations with Vice Chancellor (Susan) Szpyrka, and then of course the chancellor weighs in on that conversation as well.”
Sophomore business major David Meyer said he never really feels in danger at UCCS.
“I actually do think that they do a really good job informing all of the students here of emergencies,” Meyer said.
For more information and to sign up to receive alerts from Emergency Management, students can visit uccs.edu/pusafety.