Tuesday afternoon, during the final Student Senate meeting of the academic year, legislation was brought before the body to discuss the College of Charleston’s Emergency Preparedness Plan. The first resolution to come before the Senate was Resolution 12, authored by Senators Phil Paradise and Charles Joughin. The resolution called upon different departments of the College of Charleston to come together to re-evaluate the Emergency Preparedness Plan in the event of an emergency. Specifically, it called upon Public Safety, Student Affairs, and Residence Life & Housing to work together with off-campus entites including the City of Charleston Police Department, Fire Department, local area hospitals, and South Carolina Law Enforcement division, so that we may work together to ensure the safety of our students and college employees. After debate on the resolution of how to implement the plan, the Student Senate voted to pass the resolution.
Resolution 13 then came before the Senate, authored by Senator Phil Paradise. The resolution was created to “express solidarity with the students, faculty, and staff of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University following the shootings of April 16, 2007.” The Senate passed this resolution by unanymous consent to express our sympathy and condolences on behalf of the Student Body of the College of Charleston.
The Student Government Association as a whole feels that as students, nothing should come in the way of each student having an equal opportunity to an education and one’s life once you receive that coveted degree. Our hope is that a tragedy like this will never occur again, and we extend our symapthy to those who went to class one morning to further their education and whose lives were tragically stolen. From one Student Body to another, Virginia Tech is in our hearts and prayers.
Resources:
Resolution 12: On the Emergency Preparedness Plan of the College of Charleston
Is this resolution necessary? Doesn’t the College already have much of this in place?
Take a look at public safety and you be the judge. Mabey they do, does it hurt anything to ask them to look at this stuff again? I think VT thought that their plans were ready, taking a look at the plans following these developments and figuring out if our plans would have faired something like this hardly seems like a bad thing.
The point of the resolution was to ensure the procedures currently in place are up-to-date and the most effective possible. Our goal is to ensure that if something like what happened at VaTech was to happen here, our emergency procedures would be effective. New technology is developing all the time and perhaps a better and more efficient means of communicating information to large groups (ie the student body) might become available. Thank you for taking interest in the resolution and I encourage you to attend senate meetings in the fall.
Both resolutions passed were necessary, we must continually strive to keep our campus safe and through the passing of Resolution 12 we remind not only Public Safety but also the Faculty, Staff and President of our needs. By stating this, we will hopefully be able to work alongside Public Safety to, as Charlie said, develop better communication on campus and a more effective safety system. I would also like to remind you to participate in SGA meetings in the Fall beginning September 18th!