Dean’s List: What has UNC done to improve campus safety a year after fatal shooting?
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UNC Shooting
UNC professor Zijie Yan was fatally shot Aug. 28, 2023, in Chapel Hill, NC,, prompting an hourslong lockdown and questions about campus security. Yan’s graduate student has been charged with his murder. Here is ongoing News & Observer coverage about the killing, the campus response and the aftermath.
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Wednesday will mark one year since the on-campus shooting at UNC-Chapel Hill that left a professor dead.
Tailei Qi, a now-former graduate student at the university, is accused of fatally shooting Zijie Yan, a professor in the Department of Applied Physical Sciences, in a campus lab building. The event locked down campus for several hours.
The university’s bell tower will chime at 1:15 p.m. Wednesday in honor of Yan, Chancellor Lee Roberts announced Monday.
There has been little movement in the criminal case against Qi, who was charged the day after the shooting with first-degree murder and misdemeanor possession of a firearm on educational property.
Last November, Qi was found mentally ill and unfit to continue with court proceedings, with a judge ordering him to be committed to a state psychiatric hospital for treatment. If his condition were to improve, the judge ruled, the court proceedings could move forward.
Qi’s attorney will return to court in December for a status update, Orange-Chatham District Attorney Jeff Nieman told N&O reporter Tammy Grubb on Monday.
But there has been progress in another area since the shooting, with UNC evaluating how it prepares for and responds to emergencies — and implementing changes to campus safety protocols and technologies that had been years in the making.
Welcome to Dean’s List, a roundup of higher education news in the Triangle and across North Carolina from The News & Observer and myself, Korie Dean.
This week’s edition includes an overview of the changes UNC has made since last August, plus a multi-year partnership between Fayetteville State University and Lenovo that the university’s chancellor says will be “a real game changer.”
How campus safety at UNC has changed after shooting
In the days following the Aug. 28 shooting, some students recounted to The N&O that they felt they and their professors were not adequately prepared for the emergency by the university. Some faculty continued to teach while the university was on lockdown, and some said they felt the university’s communication during the event did not clearly convey the nature of the threat or what to do as it unfolded.
While the university made active-shooter training available upon request prior to the shooting, such training was not required — despite the university being urged to implement such requirements in an internal audit conducted in 2020, three years before the shooting.
That has changed now, almost a full year after the shooting. Faculty were assigned an online, 25-minute emergency training program last month, with Provost Chris Clemens requesting all instructors complete the modules before the fall semester began last week. Similar training is expected to eventually be implemented for staff and students, too.
The move to implement new training came after a post-shooting “after-action report,” issued by an independent agency to the university in May, recommended the university do so.
Beyond training, the university has also made changes to its campus safety infrastructure and technology over the past year. Those changes include:
▪ Completing a multi-year project, which began in 2018, to ensure classrooms have properly functioning interior door locks. The project’s last phase, which was to install locks in classrooms that fit between 10 and 24 students, had not been completed by the Aug. 28 shooting, but was finished in the weeks following the event.
▪ Installing license plate readers around campus through Flock Safety, a private company. The university had placed an order for the readers prior to the shooting, but later canceled the contract upon learning Flock “was not licensed to do business in North Carolina.” After Flock resolved that issue with the state Alarm Systems Licensing Board, UNC entered into a new contract with the company in March.
Flock technology allows police to search for any license plate for up to 30 days after plates are logged. The company has been criticized, notably by the American Civil Liberties Union, for the vast amount of data it collects and the lack of regulation surrounding the technology, but UNC Police Chief Brian James has said the technology would help his department “better secure campus.”
▪ Making the messaging on Alert Carolina emergency notifications clearer, and sending updates more often. In an active-shooter situation, the messages will now include instructions to “run from a threat, hide if you can’t, and fight if you must.” Previously, the messages told the campus community to go inside, avoid windows and stay put until given further notice.
“Providing more actionable language, emails and texts will help the community find the safest option in an emergency,” according to a university article on the changes, published Thursday.
▪ Adding an “I’m OK!” feature to the Carolina Ready safety app, which allows users to notify their loved ones and other contacts of their whereabouts and status during campus emergencies.
“Safety on campus is always the top priority, and we have learned a lot in the last year about improving our safety procedures,” Roberts said in a campus message Monday, adding that the university “will continue to find ways to make our security measures even more effective.”
Fayetteville State, Lenovo launch multi-year partnership
Under a new partnership with Lenovo, all first-year students at Fayetteville State University will receive new laptops this year — as will the next three incoming classes of students.
Lenovo has committed to providing more than 800 laptops for students this year. In all, the company is expected to provide more than 3,200 laptops over the four-year partnership.
Campus and Lenovo leaders announced the partnership at the university’s annual pinning ceremony, held on Aug. 18. In a news release, Chancellor Darrell Allison called the initiative “a real game changer” and indicated it would help students graduate on-time, in four years — something Allison has pushed since he became chancellor in 2021, notably by offering free summer school to all students.
Cheo Johnson, general manager of Lenovo’s U.S. sales center, said in a news release that the university’s “efforts to ensure on-time graduation align perfectly with our mission to empower students to reach their full potential.”
Higher education news I’m reading
- The number of applications submitted through the Common Application rose across the board and for historically underrepresented students last year, despite the U.S. Supreme Court overturning the consideration of race in the admissions process, Inside Higher Ed reports.
- Duke Kunshan University, a joint venture between Duke University and Wuhan University in China, welcomed its largest-ever class this fall. But the university’s future is uncertain, with the initial partnership set to expire in 2028, the Duke Chronicle reports.
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That’s all for this roundup of North Carolina higher education news. I hope you’ll stay tuned for more.
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This story was originally published August 27, 2024 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Dean’s List: What has UNC done to improve campus safety a year after fatal shooting?."
