Wednesday, May 01, 2019

Dear Campus Community:

The horrific act of violence at UNCC hits very close to home for so many people on our campus who are from Charlotte or otherwise have ties to that community. As I said last night, UNCC students, faculty and staff mean so much to us here at UNCW, and we stand with them as they begin the long journey of recovering from this tragic event. There will be a student-led vigil at the amphitheater at 6 p.m. today in solidarity with our UNCC peers. The UNCC administration was incredibly supportive to us in the midst of Hurricane Florence, and we stand ready to support them however we can now. 

We understand many of you may be having difficulty in response to this event. If you are a student who needs support, please contact the Counseling Center (962-3746); in response to the shooting, the center has expanded its walk-in hours for this afternoon, 1 p.m.-4 p.m. Employees in need of support should contact the Employee Assistance Program. Anyone with concerns about his or her personal safety should contact University Police (962-2222), or call 911 for emergencies. Your safety is our top concern. Acts of harassment or violence will not be tolerated here.

I empathize, too, with the parents and loved ones of our students; I am certain your hearts sank when you heard of a shooting on a UNC campus. I imagine most of you have since connected with your Seahawks, just to check in or remind them to be safe. Along those lines, while I do not wish to use an act of violence as a means to incite panic, I would be remiss if I didn’t take this opportunity to remind our campus community of the active attacker training and resources available to you. Please visit this University Police webpage to learn more about what to do in the event of an active attacker, including how to apply RUN/HIDE/FIGHT to an active attacker situation. We offer active attacker training on campus twice a month, year-round, but also offer individual training sessions for departments/units and residence halls upon request. We urge you to take advantage of these resources; we hope you will never need the information shared in our training sessions, but preparation could, in reality, someday be the difference between life and death. In addition, if you, as a student, have opted out of emergency alerts on your cell phone, I urge you to rejoin the distribution list. Faculty and staff, you must opt in for these alerts. Information about being included on the emergency alerts distribution list can be found here.

This was a deplorable act of violence and one that can never be erased from our collective memory. However, we can live with fear, or we can live with the resolve to not let fear win. I hope you will join me in committing to the latter.

Sincerely,

Chancellor Jose V. Sartarelli