The recent shooting deaths of seven students at Northern Illinois University brings up unsettling thoughts about that happening here. At IT Central, we are the “Help Desk”. Being part of a Help Desk, means that by the time we are contacted, many times the caller or walk-in client is at the very end of his rope. He is extremely frustrated that his password doesn’t work, or that he can’t log into the wireless network and he blames the IT department for his difficulty. Being the Help Desk, we get: “You changed my password! Why does my password have to change?!! Why did you do this to me?!” Sometimes it gets pretty heated. Given the broad cross section of people we deal with, it is entirely conceivable that someone at some time could be pushed over the edge.
How do we deal with such possibilities? It is inconceivable that we would be ready for anything. How can we, as an organization, possibly be prepared or even think about the unknown?
The bigger question would be what can we as an organization do to prevent situations that would push someone over the edge? How can we change the processes that cause unexpecting users thinking that we have put obstacles in front of their learning or teaching experience? This can be difficult and certainly requires thinking and planning given the complexities of not only technology, but also interdepartmental policies and procedures.
So far, the best efforts are in the nature of what do we do in case of violence rather than in the prevention of it, i.e. alerting people via e-mail, voice mail and text message that there is a crisis. Let’s think ahead, so we aren’t simply mopping up the aftermath. It would require perhaps a suspension of disbelief and most importantly, time to come up with viable solutions. As the oft quoted ad jingle says: “We can do it.”
