On Monday afternoon, Feb. 27, Campus Safety was informed of a concerning post made on social media made by a former William Jewell College student. Upon investigating, Campus Safety and the Liberty Police Department determined that the post constituted a credible threat to the safety of the College’s campus. 

As a result, President of the College, Elizabeth MacLeod Walls announced the suspension of all in-person campus operations for Tuesday, Feb. 28, in an email announcement delivered to students, staff and faculty on Monday evening. To further protect essential staff and students living on campus, security presence was increased on Feb. 28 as well, including recruiting several officers from the Liberty Police Department.

Initially, Macleod Walls also added that she had not yet made a determination as to whether or not Achievement Day celebrations – slated for Friday, March 1 – would be held.

In a follow-up email sent in the evening hours of Feb. 28, MacLeod Walls informed the campus that sufficient security measures had been put in place to proceed with normal campus operations. She stated that students will be given the option to attend classes in-person or via Zoom as they feel comfortable until the end of the week. Additionally, security personnel, including officers from the Liberty Police Department, will remain on campus until further notice. Achievement Day celebrations will proceed with armed security present at the event. 

Update: As of March 2, the former student is now in custody. In lieu of this arrest and the termination of the threat to campus, the College is reassessing its security measures.

Rendering of the deer on campus.

As students were studying hard and fending off the cold Nov. 17, those who receive WJC Alerts (William Jewell College’s alert system) got an unexpected message.

At 3:50 p.m., the following text message was sent out through the alert system:

“We have received several reports of an [aggressive] male deer with antlers by the baseball stadium and by the maintenance shop behind Semple Hall. This behavior from a deer is a little unusual but not unheard of at this time of year,” the alert read. “We have contacted the authorities and will continue to monitor the situation. We don’t believe the animal is ill, but for your safety, if you see the deer please stay away and call Campus Safety.”

Unprecedented as it was, this alert had the campus buzzing. Despite many students already having left for Thanksgiving break, those remaining students feared this deer.

According to Landon Jones, director of campus safety, there were about three reports of this aggressive deer. When asked about the incident, he explained that the College is near large wooded areas and this is not the first deer sighting on campus. Spotting deer is relatively normal in this area.

However, Jones said “[as] far as I know we have not seen anything like this before.”

Such clarification indicates that the campus is relatively safe from such deer and that this should not become a focus of student anxiety.

One of the students who reported the aggressive deer was Annie D’Annibale, senior nursing major. D’Annibale was running by the baseball field on her way back to Senior House when the confrontation occurred.

On her run, D’Annibale noticed something out of the corner of her eye – the deer, running at her.

D’Annibale stopped moving to avoid the threat.

“He [the aggressive deer] stopped about 4 feet from me and started snorting. We had a standoff for about 5 minutes of me trying to move without him starting to run at me again,” D’Annibale recounted.

The encounter ended peacefully. D’Annibale called her roommate to call Campus Safety to report the standoff.

In case of such an encounter, it is important to have Campus Safety’s number saved in your phone. The number is also on the sticker placed on the back of your student ID. Contact Campus Safety by calling (816) 365-0709.

“I was super scared. It’s funny now though,” D’Annibale said about a week after the incident.

In a positive twist of fate, the saga ended without excessive drama.

“The deer eventually went back to the woods around the golf course area. We did consult with the conservation department to make them aware. But fortunately the deer moved on by itself,” said Jones.

Local Liberty resident, and certifiably not an expert on deer, Luke Dema advised that “once you see it, it’s already too late.” He is incorrect.

Featured image courtesy of Catherine Dema.

In the email, Jones informed the Jewell community about the upgraded locks on classroom doors that can be locked from the inside with a push button or lever lock, summarized campus trends including a recent increase in vehicle thefts and identified actions everyone can take to deter theft on campus.

One area of the new policy that students should have no problem buying into is vehicular theft prevention. According to KCTV News, Kansas City had more car thefts than any other city in Missouri in 2017. The number of car thefts in the metro area increased from 7,800 in 2016 to more than 9,700 in 2017. Additionally, KMBC News reported that car thefts have risen 25 percent in the Kansas City area.

“People have realized that cars are kind of an easy target,” said Jones. “It really only takes a couple seconds to open a car door, look in the glove box, grab some cash and leave.”

Nathan Wasson, sophomore Oxbridge: History of Ideas major, gained first hand experience with vehicular theft when his car, a 2002 Acura RSX type S, was stolen from campus last November. Wasson suspects that the make and model of his car contributed largely to the theft.

“[The car] is prized among a certain community of people,” Wasson said, adding that his car was locked when it was stolen, possibly indicating the thief knew the car’s value.

An overview of the cars in the “Sahara,” a lot where most William Jewell College students park.

Wasson’s experience may be an outlier, but his story is a reminder to the Jewell community that our campus is not immune to car theft, and that it is more important than ever to keep car doors locked and store valuables out of sight.

Campus Safety has also begun patrolling campus streets at night.

“The reason for that is to deter people who would [steal a car],” explains Jones. “We want them to see that we patrol and go maybe somewhere else.”

The updated policy also included the launch of the See Something, Do Something campaign, which endeavors to make students more aware of various resources on campus–one of them being the new anonymous hotline.

“There’s only so much that I and the officers can do, but we have a thousand people who live and work [on campus] so that’s a lot of eyes, that’s a lot of ears. [Just] having everyone else brought in is incredibly effective,” Jones said.

“[The campaign is all about] getting people engaged in their own safety and [encouraging] people to, if they see concerns, to take action directly,” Jones said. “[Jewell is] a very caring community and I think the See Something, Do Something campaign carries that forward.”

Jewell students may have seen the See Something, Do Something posters around campus. The posters contain helpful resources such as the contact information of various offices that can provide assistance related to sexual assault, safety, security and student conduct. The poster also contains the number of the new anonymous hotline.

Samantha Fulte, senior biochemistry major, shared that the idea for the anonymous hotline came partly from the students and faculty of the Diversity Education Work Group (DEWG).

“Our first goal was to develop a Bias Incident Response Plan,” Fulte said. “[The anonymous tip line] was a way for people to report incidents of bias on campus.”

Fulte said that DEWG also intended the tip line to acquire information about safety at Jewell. “Just because our annual campus safety report says that there were 0 instances of X, doesn’t mean that X is not occurring,” Fulte said. Ultimately, there is potential for the anonymous tip line to fulfill both of these uses.

“[We want to] make it as easy as possible for people to report something,” said Jones. “Getting those reports of concerning behavior is so important to preventing tragedies.”

Beyond the new portions of campus safety’s policies, it is still important for students to lock their dorm rooms and avoid leaving doors propped to the residence halls.

“When you prop a door you [compromise] security for everybody else in that building,” Jones said.

Ernie Stufflebean, Associate Dean of Students and Director of Student Life, also commented on campus safety at William Jewell.

“I do think Jewell is a safe campus,” said Stufflebean. “However, I also think that safety poses our greatest challenge. We’re not immune from crime, and opportunity exists because we let our guard down.”

Ways for students to report concerns and get support:

Online form: williamjewell.formstack.com/forms/concerning_behavior_report

Online anonymous form: jewell.ethicspoint.com

Anonymous hotline: 1-844-473-4842

Photos courtesy of Cassie Hayes. 

The sessions were hosted by Landon Jones, director of campus safety, and Officer Kyle Hamline in Yates-Gill College Union on Aug. 14 and Aug. 28. These drills come shortly ahead of a campus-wide lockdown drill scheduled for 11:15 a.m. Sept. 5.

The Hilltop Monitor reporters attended the latter of the two sessions. It began with an introduction from Jones, during which he urged students to be on the lookout for warning signs and report any suspicious activity.

“Tonight will be about responding to violence when faced with it, but more about preventing violence,” said Jones. “There are almost always warning signs […] people don’t just snap.”

Officer Hamline echoed Jones’ message throughout the training.

“Everywhere you go in life there is evil, there is violence,” said Hamline. “The purpose of this workshop is instilling the mindset of preparedness.”

Officer Hamline demonstrates using a belt for leverage to ensure that a door cannot be pulled open from the outside.

Encouraging students to be more knowledgeable about this topic, Hamline urged students to familiarize themselves with secure locations on campus in which they could hide in the event of an active shooter.

“On the Hill the mindset is if not when, that’s why these chairs here aren’t filled,” Hamline said.

School shootings are nothing new in the United States, but with an average of more than one occurrence per week reported in 2018, training teachers and students to respond to the violence is becoming the norm.

In addition to training, governments across the nation have been taking action. According to an article released by the National Public Radio (NPR), at least 330 school safety bills were introduced to state legislators in 2018 and 53 of those have been signed into law to date.