The Wood Word would like to issue a correction in regard to the article, “BREAKING NEWS: Police apprehend armed suspect on campus,” published on Wednesday, Oct. 4.

In our haste to get a report out to the Marywood community in the aftermath of Wednesday’s event, we initially reported that Marywood President Sr. Mary Persico, IHM, Ed. D. said in an interview there is currently no protocol in place at Marywood to handle a situation involving a person with a weapon on campus.

We realized, after another review of the transcript, that this statement was incorrect. We apologize for any confusion it may have caused our readers.

Below is a complete transcript of the portion of the interview referring to Marywood’s protocol:
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Wood Word Reporter: Would you be able to give us an update on what was happening on campus today?

Persico: Well today on campus, it was reported to Campus Safety that there was an individual on campus who had a weapon. Campus Safety immediately called 911 and the Scranton and Dunmore police were here within minutes. I would say within five minutes of that initial report, the individual who had the firearm was apprehended and he was apprehended in his vehicle and no one was hurt. So, it was without incident, and we’re all very, very grateful for that. I would also like to say to all of our students and our faculty and staff that their safety is of utmost importance to me and to all of us, and that we will be debriefing this–we already are debriefing it–and we will be doing that again tomorrow and we will make sure that we have all kinds of protocols in place going forward so that in the event that this should ever happen again–we certainly hope it won’t–that we will all know the procedures and policies to follow at such time.

Wood Word Reporter: There wasn’t a specific protocol in place for a person with a weapon on campus?

Persico: Well, there is a protocol in place for anything that is injurious to anybody here on campus, but actually, it happened so quickly–he was apprehended so quickly–that we didn’t even have a chance to get the E2Campus alert out and it was over. So that’s a good thing, but we were about to do that when we were told that it was over.
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The university has a list of emergency plans, including an emergency action and response plan as well as emergency evacuation guidelines, according to Marywood’s website.

These plans detail emergency actions for civil disturbances, explosions of major vehicles, earthquakes, public health or medical emergencies, a chemical release, terrorist threat or incident or bomb threat.

Additionally on Marywood’s website is the emergency notification procedure, which includes information on the protocol for using the E2Campus alert system and proposed notification messages.

The E2Campus alert system “was developed to furnish information and direction so that campus community members may immediately protect themselves in an emergency situation.”

More information on Marywood’s Campus Safety Emergency Protocol can be found on Marywood’s website.

Rachel Looker
Editor-in-Chief