Live from Good Counsel

Christopher Bellotti

5:15 AM – I wake up to my friends saying “Bellotti, there was a shooting. We are on lockdown.” Helicopters are flying directly overhead. Police are swarming around outside. My friends were alerted by another friend who tried to return to South campus, only to be informed that he had to turn around when he was halfway there. I cross the hall to go my friends’ room and find it rather interesting that being on lockdown only meant that Public Safety was sitting at the door. Had the guy somehow gotten access to the building, the officer would’ve only asked, “May I see your WildCard?” Sitting in the room, we check the Website and our e-mail for any information about the incident – nothing. My roommate, who was studying on Main, called and advised us to shut our lights and close the blinds. We turn on the news to find out that a shooting occurred in what is basically Good Counsel’s backyard at 4 a.m. Where is this guy? Could he be hiding right behind our building?

6:30 – We turn on the morning news and CBS3 reports live from the scene. They show S.W.A.T. officers getting ready on one side of Stanford Hall. We look outside and see exactly what we just saw on TV. Still, very few people have any knowledge of the situation. But my friends begin to shiver in fear even more than before. Villanovan.com is the only Website reporting the information, responding faster than the administration.

7:45 – Good Counsel becomes hysteria. People are all over the place trying to find out what happened. Everyone is in a frenzy of sending instant messages and making phone calls to friends to let them know. I send an e-mail to Director of Student Development Tom Mogan and Dean of Students Paul Pugh demanding that they inform the student body immediately of what is happening on South.

8:15 – S.W.A.T. teams and K-9 Units are visibly patrolling the area. Dining services is being escorted to work, three helicopters are flying overhead, and a S.W.A.T. team member is crawling inside a hole in the back of Good Counsel. Still no word from administration.

9:00 – After five hours of being kept in the dark, we are finally informed by the University homepage that “police activity” delayed class until 10:30 a.m. However, everyone on South already knows that there’s more than an “incident” by just looking outside the window. Still, no e-mail from administration details what students should do, especially South campus residents.

9:45 – I am reading Dean Pugh’s e-mail two hours after I sent mine. It simply says that Radnor police is “investigating an incident [that] occurred off-campus.” The story from South is quite different. I walk into the Good Counsel lobby and a fellow resident says to me “S.W.A.T. is in the basement.”

10:00 – A criminal is still on the loose in the area, possibly finding safe haven in the second most populated residence hall on South Campus. The disparity between the media, what the administration is saying and the actual scene is unbelievable.

Think it’s time the students get clued in? Speak up, Villanova.