According to the UCCS Police website, there are 32 automated external defibrillator units (AEDs) on campus, but none of these units are located in any of the residence halls.
With the potential to receive new funding to upgrade the dorms, some students and faculty feel this money should go toward implementing AED units in the dorms, while others believe there are other upgrades that should be prioritized.
According to Benek Altayli, the interim assistant vice chancellor of health and wellness, UCCS applied for funding to improve safety in the dorms from the South Central Health Care Coalition. This funding could amount to up to $30,000.
“I said, ‘here is our shopping list, and this is our priority. What can we do?’” Altayli said.
On Altayli’s shopping list is new EpiPens, evac chairs and AEDs for the dorms. Altayli thinks an alarm for students to activate via an AED cabinet would be beneficial for students to have at their disposal in case of emergencies, adding that the best place for AEDs in the dorms would be in the main rooms of Monarch and La Plata.
“Apparently our response time is two minutes … [but] wouldn’t it be good to have a standard [AED] that can also be used as a quick, easy alarm if there is an emergency?” Altayli said.
Altayli is communicating with newly appointed Emergency Manager Kristopher Parsons on how to use the funds, but he has different feelings about AEDs being a top safety priority in the dorms.
Parsons cites that if an emergency happens in Aspen, and the AED is in Monarch, UCCS Police, equipped with AEDs, will be able to respond more quickly. Additionally, Parsons said that in the past three years, there hasn’t been a medical emergency in the dorms where an AED was used, adding that it’s incredibly rare for young people, which are most students who live in the dorms, to need them.
AEDs with an automatic alarm cost about $3,000 per unit, according to Parsons. “If we were to put one [AED] in every dorm, and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, what else could we have done with that money instead?” he said.
Daniel Baker, the deputy chief of operations for the Emergency Medical Services Club, said that the importance of having AEDs around campus is something they promote.
“AEDs are vital pieces of equipment in a cardiac arrest. Two of the most significant contributors to survival in cardiac arrest are early, high-quality CPR and early defibrillation. Anecdotally, in my career as a paramedic, the most common denominator among cardiac arrest patients that survived was both of those components,” Baker said.
In addition to being beneficial in the event of cardiac arrest, all AEDs on campus are outfitted with Narcan, an anti-overdose measure for opioids. As of right now, the closest place with Narcan available to students in the dorms are the dining halls, although Narcan is also available at the Wellness Center for students to take home.
Looking at safety priorities through an accessibility lens
Parsons said that evac chairs should be higher in the priority list for new safety measures. An evac chair is a piece of equipment for incapacitated or ADA persons that can help get them to safety, usually in the event of a fire.
Parsons thinks that evac chairs make more sense financially due to the cost of AEDs, but that the decision is still difficult because evac chairs require training to know how to use them.
According to Parsons, the dorms are equipped with fire extinguishers in the halls every 75 feet, smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, sprinklers and fire graded stairwells. The current plan for people with accessibility issues on a non-ground level floor during a fire is to go to the fire graded stairwell, notify Public Safety and wait for them to come.
According to Director of Residence Life Molly Kinne, residents who require accessibility accommodations are prioritized to be put on the first floor.
Despite this accommodation, some students feel the plan isn’t adequate.
“I can only imagine how terrifying it is to be sitting up in a stairwell, and you don’t know when someone’s coming for you,” said senior student and SGA Senator-at-Large Aiyanna Quinones.
Quinones has friends who require mobility accommodations in the dorms and has challenges herself, and she thinks that the fire safety plans need to be changed.
“Anywhere that you expect people to be, you should expect disabled people to be as well. Because they are supposed to access those very same spaces,” she said.
As someone who’s worked in safety for 20 years, Parsons said that no place can be completely safe, as will always be something that seeps through the cracks. He said that the best UCCS can do is implement safety features and adjust when incidents occur.
“There’s 1,000 things that happen behind the scenes that we are doing … the amount of programs, classes, teachings, inspections and safety walks that happen that no one is really aware of until something happens, and then we kind of get the shine,” Parsons said, “[but] it’s a bustling community, so things are always going to happen.”
An AED in the Osborne Center. Photo by Josiah Dolan.