UNLV will reopen the school complex where an active gunman killed three people last December and wounded another, authorities said today.
Beam Hall, which has been closed for maintenance since the tragedy, will house about 160 categories in the fall, Dean Chris Heavey said at a briefing with university leaders about campus resumption after the Dec. 6, 2023, shooting.
The gunman, a guy who was denied a coaching position at business school, was eventually killed in a shootout with law enforcement outside Beam Hall. Students were locked down for hours as police evacuated the campus.
“To think that we’re going to know everything that we wanted to do from the beginning of all this, I’m not going to say that we know it – it’s a continuous set of demanding situations similar to what happened – and how we want it, as a community, to be able to provide the services, the support, the reflection, the movements (and) the strategy to be able to be more resilient,” UNLV President Keith Whitfield said in the update.
Wade Vandervort
Security guards stand outside Beam Hall at UNLV on Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2024.
When other people enter Beam Hall in late August, they will set up a new security kiosk in the atrium with a full-time security worker, called a yellowjacket, stationed from 7 a. m. to 7 p. m. throughout the week. Security cameras now adorn the walls of Beam Hall’s five floors, with the option to add more, UNLV Police Chief Adam Garcia said.
The lamps that were broken in the Dec. 6 mass shooting are expected to be repaired by the end of August, and Beam Hall, in particular, will launch new pilot programs, such as adding e-cards to floors 3 through 5 on the stairs and elevator.
The offices of the three murdered teachers will be repurposed. The university’s memorial committee is still deciding what the long-term projects will be, said Dr. William Robinson, president of the faculty Senate.
Infrastructure innovations are being rolled out only at Beam Hall, but also at campuses and establishments across the state, officials said.
“We have disorder all over campus: we have security disorders in the fine arts areas; we have security messes in the library; we have security disturbances within the student union,” Robinson said. “We want to have a popular campus. You want to have a popular opinion on how we’re going to keep our campus safe, and those people want to make the whole campus bigger.
Garcia, chairman of the Chancellor’s Committee on Public Safety, said they were successful in pushing for a $2. 6 million allocation from the state to bolster security at UNLV, the College of Southern Nevada, the Desert Research Institute and Nevada State University.
The money will go toward hiring more “yellow vest security guards” who visibly patrol the campus, Garcia said.
The committee will submit recommendations to the state Board of Regents for approval.
One of the recommendations is to replace locking mechanisms throughout the system so that they use a “single-action motion” that allows other people to lock doors from the inside by simply pushing or turning. Emergency reaction groups would receive a key. , key card or code that would give them the ability to unlock the doors in an emergency without being damaged, Garcia said.
Other recommendations include developing a formula-wide policy for approving, triggering, and investment panic alarms in “vulnerable areas,” mandatory security language addressing “active attacker events,” and creating a formula-wide emergency notification formula so that all establishments in Nevada’s higher education system would receive an emergency alert.
The three slain professors, Naoko Takemaru, Patricia Navarro Velez and Jerry Cha-Jan Chang, will be temporarily memorialized in the outdoor courtyard near the William F. Harrah College of Hospitality.
Robinson said it “deserves to move forward soon to install a transient monument at this site” and that “it seems like a logical position for the permanent memorial. “