Biola students are given all the disaster information, but aside from four fire drills a year, it is up to them to know and understand what to do in an emergency.

Emergency drills are more common in elementary schools

Compared to elementary school, where students are required to participate in drills and are given step-by-step instructions for emergency situations, ten out of the ten Biola students interviewed said that they felt unprepared to face a disaster.

“I felt safer in elementary school because there were more drills and I knew exactly what to do and where to go,” said senior history major Rob Scott.

Both institutions have regular fire drills. However, students in elementary schools are led in such a way that makes the drills seem routine whereas Biola students are provided with the information and expected to follow the procedures on their own.

“We have a fire drill every month and alternate on a monthly basis with earthquake drills and lock down,” said Renee Jeffrey of Mabel L. Pendleton Elementary. According to Jeffrey, the school participates in California Shake Out, the state-wide earthquake drill, and a district wide disaster drill once a year.

Preparing for a disaster

At Biola, students have access to all the disaster procedure information through a variety of outlets.

“We have a lot of information of what to do on our website and we have pamphlets as well that are handed out during orientation,” said Justin Shelby, Campus Safety information officer.

In terms of practicing drills, students who live on campus practice two dorm fire drills per semester. Each dorm is assigned an officer who sits down with resident directors numerous times throughout a semester to discus concerns and coordinate fire drills, Shelby explained.

“When you become a new RD, you go through extensive training through all new scenarios and you learn how to be a first responder to a lot of different situations,” said Debbie Hasbrouck, resident director of Alpha East. She explained that RDs train by role-playing certain scenarios in which they are thrown into situations and forced to react tin the best way they see fit.

Every building is assigned a building coordinator who responds to co-workers and crisis situations much like a resident director would to those in their dorm.

In power outages or instances that demand discrete communication — such as active shooter incidents — Biola students and faculty rely on their cellphones in order to receive updates from Campus Safety, Shelby said.

“We don’t have a campus wide PA system to get in touch with all of the students and staff members. Everyone has cellphones now,” Shelby said.

Biola campus is still one of the safest

Even with all of the information available to students, 10 out of 10 students interviewed felt as if they still weren’t prepared because they do not know all of it.

Some credit students’ responsibility for their own safety and do not know what to do, or fail to heed warnings as the reason for poor responses to dangerous situations.

“I don’t think we are aware of what the best things are to do specifically on campus like if we are in a class,” senior nursing major Kelly Hoy said.

Regardless, Shelby holds that “Biola is one of the safest far and away; and that’s due to a number of factors.” These factors include that Biola is in a safe community, has a fairly large population, has a good relationship with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and that Campus Safety department “does an excellent job of keeping our campus safe, according to Shelby.