The NIU Police on Monday shared some of the lessons learned from dealing with the Feb. 14 shootings.

In Oklahoma.

If this doesn’t sound odd to you, or at least a bit ironic, it should. The University Police have remained mum regarding just about everything having to do with the shootings here at home, but now are offering some of their expert insight to a group of strangers in another state.

Lts. Darren Mitchell and Todd Henert offered the keynote address at the 2008 National Campus Security Summit at the University of Central Oklahoma on Monday. Their presentation was called “Experiences and Key Lessons Learned from the NIU Tragedy.” Sounds interesting, especially to those of us here at NIU – where the shootings actually took place.

The funny thing about this is that, in other circumstances, the UP sharing the lessons it learned from our tragedy at a national campus security summit would be a very honorable and noble undertaking.

After all, we are in a unique position to assist other campuses and communities in preparing for and handling tragedies and crises in the future. No one would argue that this isn’t something we at NIU shouldn’t be doing.
But the UP delivering this presentation in Oklahoma is anything but honorable and noble. The UP has ignored and disrespected its own NIU community in favor of looking good for law enforcement officials and college administrators from across the country. Why hasn’t the UP shared its experiences and lessons learned with the NIU community, where they live and work? (This is a rhetorical question, as the University Police doesn’t talk to the Northern Star for the reason of answering questions like this.)

You probably never heard anything about two of our University Police lieutenants speaking in Oklahoma, and that’s no coincidence. The top brass at the UP did NOT want you to know about it, simply put.

The Star called Lt. Henert last Thursday to ask him about his participation in the security summit and he declined to comment. Chief Grady and Lt. Mitchell did not return messages left for them last Thursday. None of them returned messages left for them by the Star on Tuesday.

Hopefully, you are becoming frustrated while you read this, as the UP is supposed to work for us: the students, faculty and staff of NIU.

In DeKalb, Illinois.

If they really did care about us at NIU, they’d share their experiences and lessons learned from the shootings here.

In DeKalb.

It’s one thing to make special efforts to hide and cover up that which makes an organization look bad in the eyes of the public.

But to cover up and attempt to keep secret that which would normally make one look good is asinine and beyond all capacity of reason.

It’s good to share what we’ve learned from the tragedies, but it should start at home, where they occurred.

All comments are moderated before being published. We will not edit your comments, but we also will not approve those that are abusive, off-topic, attack another poster or contain information we know to be libelous or false.

During peak weekday viewing times, most comments will be reviewed within six hours. For more detailed information, click here.

After submitting your comment, check below for a confirmation message.

• Your name:
• Enter text from image:
  

• Your comment:

* 300-character count. HTML formatting will not display.