Within the past few years, North America has seen a rise in public or school, mass shootings. Although FBI  Uniform Crime records show that murder rates have declined 49 per cent in the United States since 1993, most of the deaths from gun violence have come from the media highlighted shootings in the past decade.

With mass shootings on the rise, Frank Zappone, leader of the Occupational and Health Safety Team at Lethbridge College, believes that a mass notification system at Lethbridge College is necessary.

“In today’s day and age, with all the things that are going on, you hear about it on U.S. campuses that I think the time has come that we do have something like that in place and hopefully we never have to use it,” said Zappone. “I don’t think there’s a high probability; I think you’re starting to see it more often in the news now. So we felt that rather than wait until something happens and realize we don’t have a system in place to be prepared in case something like this happens.”

In the case of an emergency, one of six people at the college with a specific code manually enter a password into the system. It then sends an electronic notification to all rooms with a phone that emits a loud announcement that there is an emergency. In the areas without a phone, they have installed digital clocks with built in speakers to make the announcement.

Lethbridge College has also recently uploaded an emergency safety video with instructions on what one should do in case of an active shooter emergency (Click the link to watch the eight-minute clip). Faculty have been given the option to show the movie to students and the college has also uploaded it to the website.