Cal State Fullerton’s Police Chief, Judi King, will speak to the Academic Senate on Thursday about campus safety in light of the Virginia Tech massacre.

Academic Senate Chair Diana Guerin said that after the Virginia Tech shootings, the Academic Senate decided that it should invite King to update the campus on what steps the police would take in an emergency. Guerin said it is important that faculty and staff be aware of what plans are in place.

Part of King’s presentation will focus on the preventative measures that University Police has taken.

“A big part of this is making sure that people have an understanding of what the realities are,” King said. “People need to know what systems we have in place to help us in having these systems work appropriately.”

In addition to preventative measures, King will discuss the plans University Police has in place.

Police officers receive training under the Active Shooter Program. In most active shooter situations, police officers cannot wait for assistance from other agencies, so officers receive training on how to respond, King said.

Lt. Tom Gehrls of CSUF’s University Police said in active shooter situations, police must know how to quickly respond to a situation.

“In incidents like this, it’s going to be fairly short term for the most part. They usually don’t last an extremely long amount of time, so time is critical. As soon as that clock starts ticking, every second counts,” Gehrls said.

Working with the police, Environmental Health and Instructional Safety runs the Building Marshal Program. Building and floor marshals are trained to respond in an emergency. The marshals may help evacuate buildings and act as messengers, relaying information from police to people in the building, King said.

King said she will also discuss the electronic system CSUF has in place to notify faculty, staff and students via telephone or e-mail.

The system uses information that students provide at the time of admission and King said the goal is to update student information.

“The intent is for us to have an ability to notify people in the event of an emergency and we can’t do that if we don’t have their contact information,” King said.

Students, faculty and staff may also be notified by CSUF’s public address system located at the interior and exterior of buildings. The system can send messages from the police dispatch center informing people of an emergency, or if they need to evacuate a building or stay inside the building.

“Here on campus when something of that magnitude happens, you want to stop and take a look at what you would do,” Guerin said.

Chief King will be speaking at the Academic Senate meeting on Thursday at 12:30 p.m.