University of North Carolina Releases Report on August Shooting

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has released a report about the institution’s response to the Aug. 28, 2023, shooting in which a professor, Zijie Yan, was murdered.

An independent research firm, CNA Corporation, performed interviews with more than 70 campus and community stakeholders and reviewed feedback submitted by students, staff, faculty and families in order to analyze the university’s response to the emergency. The university has developed an improvement plan based on the firm’s recommendations, which include:

• implementing new training focused on actions individuals should take to remain safe during an active threat in the campus’s classrooms, offices and other campus spaces;
• running a drill in partnership with other law enforcement agencies to test multi-agency emergency response protocols;
• developing guidelines and conducting trainings to help campus employees better understand their roles and responsibilities during an emergency;
• reworking the language used in campus alerts and developing infrastructure to potentially be able to send more frequent alerts during incidents;
• adding information about counseling services to the university’s Emergency Operations Plan in order to more rapidly provide the community with mental health resources after an incident;
• and creating a working group that will acquire and install an integrated camera management system on campus.

In the aftermath of the shooting, students criticized the university’s response, saying their professors seemed unprepared for an active shooter situation and, in some cases, continued teaching. There were also inaccuracies in the emergency alerts that were sent out to students, and some doors in university buildings lacked locks.

There was a second emergency lockdown on the same campus just over two weeks later, though that incident resulted in no injuries or deaths.