'Run, hide, fight': Some MSU students critical of text message from school during shooting
CHICAGO (WLS) -- After the deadly Northern Illinois University attack in 2008, the I-Team began looking into methods schools could use to protect students and staff.
One has become standard operating procedure in many places: the run, hide and fight tactic that was used at Michigan State University, and is the active school shooter strategy across Illinois.
An untold number of MSU students survived the horrendous attack by embracing three words that came in a text message from the university: run, hide and fight.
RELATED | Suspected Michigan State University shooter viewed himself as a 'loner,' FBI says
A decade ago this month, the I-Team first looked into what was then a controversial approach to escaping an active school shooter, especially because of the suggestion that students should have to fight for their lives.
With tens of thousands of students at MSU, "run" was the easiest part of the text message to be carried out after gunfire was heard and 911 calls started. Hiding and sheltering in place was also evident.
Many students began the transition from hide to fight by barricading doors and closets, while figuring out what to do in a face-to-face encounter with the shooter.
Before leaving campus with weapons and loaded magazines, the gunman shot eight people, killing three of them.
RELATED | What we know about the Michigan State mass shooting victims
Some students took to social media to criticize university officials for instructing them to fight as part of the three-word prescription for survival.
Videos instructing students to attack the attacker have been used in Illinois, and across the country, for more than a decade.
As the I-Team reported in 2013, Illinois required one active shooter emergency response drill for students and staff per school year.
RELATED | What we know about the Michigan State mass shooting victims
Ten years, and hundreds of mass shootings later, Illinois law still requires just one drill per year, with very little prescription for what they include or look like. A recent change in state law does require a drill within 90 days of the first day of school.
In a video from the University of Illinois, and at other state institutions, police instruct students to identify pens, fire extinguishers, scissors, hot coffee, glass items, belts and furniture that could be used as fighting weapons.
A new report by the U.S. Secret Service finds that in all mass shootings during a five-year span ending in 2020, there were 513 people killed and more than 1,200 wounded. Almost a third of the shooters had prior police encounters, andmore than half suffered mental illness.
