I Reported on a School Shooting. Harvard is Unprepared for a Crisis.

In late October, an intruder entered a Harvard Law School classroom, approached a student, and shut the student’s laptop atop their desk. A month later, a man was arrested at Hemenway Gym — located at HLS — for allegedly “photographing and disseminating a photo of an unsuspecting nude person.”

If you haven’t heard of these incidents, you’re not alone. Neither — I’d wager — has most of the Harvard community. As an HLS student, I’m unaware of any emailed safety notices after these security breaches, leaving me and other students to find out from word of mouth, The Crimson, or not at all. Even students who experienced the October incident did not receive clarity until a meeting with a Harvard University Police Department liaison two weeks later.

These situations are symptoms of a larger problem: Harvard is unprepared for a campus crisis.

Across the country, universities are routinely plagued by gun violence. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The University of Virginia. Michigan State University. University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Morgan State University. The list goes on. Yet, Harvard does not require its students to complete specific gun violence readiness training. It is shocking that I received more robust preparation for school shootings in elementary school than at one of the most well-resourced universities in the nation.

Harvard needs to lead higher education in treating school gun violence as seriously as it does other modern safety threats. Gun violence readiness training at Harvard should mirror other orientation requirements for students, like those regarding sexual misconduct. Indeed, there are few better ways for Harvard to spend its $53.2 billion endowment than on protecting its community. Other initiatives are useless if students are not here to use them.

HUPD’s current offerings are woefully inadequate. Its website includes a slideshow that emphasizes college campuses’ safety and the “extremely rare” nature of active shooters at universities, saying that “your mind comes to be dominated by the horrific consequences of low probability events.”

For an estimated 2.5 million college students, such horror is reality. Harvard could easily be the next name strewn across the news alongside a death count. I’ve written those headlines, and I know what it feels like to be mere miles away from unthinkable violence. After reporting on the Covenant School shooting, I wondered what I would have done if the shooter had been in my classroom or on my campus. With the backdrop of sirens delivering children and teachers to my university’s hospital, I came up with nothing — and Harvard does not fill in the blanks.

This reality is reflected in current statistics about school gun violence, which are not included in the slideshow. In it, HUPD fails to use data from this decade and draws many of its school shooting statistics from 1992-2012. Comprehensive statistics are tough to come by, but CNN reports that there have been 342 school shootings in the 2020s alone — far more than HUPD’s mention of 67 occurring between 1992-2012 and 62 active shooter incidents between 2000-19. Outdated information entrenches students in ignorance about what to do in the worst-case scenario.

Notably, the slideshow states that HUPD’s active shooter guidelines came in response to student, faculty, and staff requests following nationwide school shootings. HUPD would inspire more confidence in our safety by proactively updating and mandating Harvard-wide engagement with these materials, rather than waiting to be prompted by fearful community members.

Mandatory shooting preparedness training is also needed at Harvard because many students will not think about searching for optional resources until it is too late. Others may be confused about the guidance. For instance, if following the “run, hide, fight” approach, where should students run or hide if they are on an open lawn with a shooter nearby? Where should we assemble if we evacuate a classroom? When there is an intruder in a Harvard building – like there was at HLS last fall — should we wait to act until the individual opens fire?

Students, faculty, and staff must ask these questions in today’s climate of senseless gun violence at American schools. It is time for Harvard to provide some answers.

Rachael M. Perrotta is a 1L at Harvard Law School.