Senior vice president for business and finance Warren Madden visited the Professional and Scientific Council at its Nov. 7 meeting. He recapped the events surrounding the police chase that ended on central campus Nov. 4, and took questions from council members.
"The alert system we've developed on campus is to communicate information about immediate threats and the actions people can take to respond to whatever those threats are," Madden said.
"It was clear there was no other threat coming from this particular event. So as you look at the things people were trying to do and how this proceeded, I think you can look back and -- at least we believe -- people did the right things in the right sequence.
"I think the question is how quickly can we communicate and are there different staffing structures that will let all this happen more effectively -- as with any incident, we are in the process of reviewing all of that and will continue to do that. But you can't get this done without changing our resources and even the technology we have has some limitations with how quickly we can communicate."
Madden said administrators will continue to evaluate the response, processes and procedures for emergencies. He said expanded training and development, such as "table top exercises," are being discussed.
" When you do communicate, you want to communicate information that is factually accurate and you can't always do that in the next 10 seconds," he said.
"At the end of the day, I think the one thing that everyone needs to do is use good judgment. There's no completely right or wrong in most of these cases. There is a range of choices you have, and you need to be thoughtful about it. We hope the campus community will understand that as we move forward."
Other business
- Lindsey Wanderscheid, chair of the council's awards committee, said there is discussion about developing a P&S award that would honor longtime ISU employee and former council president Dan Woodin, who died Sept. 24.
- President-elect Amy Tehan reported that leaders of the professional staff councils at Iowa, Iowa State and Northern Iowa met at last month's state Board of Regents meeting and plan to meet again in April.
