Destler responds to today’s emergency incident

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To: RIT Community
From: Bill Destler, President
Date: March 16, 2012
Subject: Today’s emergency incident

As many of you know, RIT experienced an emergency situation this morning. The incident is over and everyone is safe.

The safety of our community is paramount and I want to commend RIT Public Safety and the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office for their quick and appropriate response.

Here is what happened:

At 8:05 a.m., an RTS bus driver reported seeing a student with what appeared to be a rifle on campus near Kate Gleason Hall and Nathaniel Rochester Hall on the residential side of campus.

The campus community was alerted immediately via the RIT Alert emergency notification system, as well as other communication channels (Message Center e-mail, RIT homepage, voicemail and social media).

During the investigation, it was determined that the student did NOT have a weapon. Instead, he was carrying an umbrella with a Samurai sword handle.

In this day and age, we feel we have to presume the worst, unfortunately, and take all precautions.

At this time, I would also like to remind all students, faculty and staff to sign up for RIT Alert, our emergency mass notification system. RIT Alert sends out messages to students, faculty and staff via text, instant message, voicemail and e-mail. You may have opted out of the system or your contact information in SIS (students) or Oracle (faculty/staff) is missing.

To learn more about the RIT Alert, go to: http://finweb.rit.edu/buscont/massnotification.html

Finally, we are very thankful that today’s incident was only precautionary and that we have dedicated professionals responding as they did.