TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — A university is a place where students should feel safe on campus, but almost 6 months ago, that safety was compromised when a shooter killed Dr. Thomas Meixner on campus.
Meixner was the head of the hydrology and atmospheric sciences department at the University of Arizona before he died last October.
On Monday, the university’s president, Dr. Robert Robbins, acknowledged he could have done more to prevent the shooting.
“I’m angry at myself that I did not do more to prevent this tragedy….We will do better. We will learn from our mistakes and we will unite together,” Robbins said.
Robbins said in order to unite, the university needs to consider the findings and recommendations from the Pax Group.
On Monday the university released a report of 33 safety recommendations from the PAX group, an independent third party group that reviewed the shooting.
One of the things the group found was that the university did not have a proper threat assessment management team with proper leadership.
The Pax Group is recommending that President Robbins establish the TAMT with processes and guidelines. They said he should be meeting with the TAMT at least once a year and should improve technology and alert systems in all departments and buildings
As for the university’s police department, the Pax Group said they should continue active threat training and encourage the community to go.
They also said they should continue implementing recommendations from prior evaluations.
As for the University of Arizona Police Department’s relationship with local police departments, they said they should meet regularly.
As for their relationship with people on campus, they said they should establish a program that would engage the campus with UAPD more often to establish rapport.
“Once all the recommendations have been implemented we will be even safer,” Robbins said.
However, safety can be subjective.
The university did ban the shooter from campus before the shooting.
Robbins said to prevent a tragedy like the shooting from happening again, they have pictures and names of people on the UAPD’s website.
“We do a fairly good job of identifying who those people are and then either arrest them or ask them to leave the campus when they’ve been banned,” he said.
Robbins also said if someone is banned on campus, it could be a possibility that the university could look on their social media for anything that could look like a threat.
However, he said he’s already confident in the university’s current measures.
“The University of Arizona is already safer than it was in October,” he said.
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Andrew Christiansen is a reporter for KGUN 9. Before joining the team, Andrew reported in Corpus Christi, Texas for KRIS6 News, Action 10 News and guest reported in Spanish for Telemundo Corpus Christi. Share your story ideas with Andrew by emailing andrew.christiansen@kgun9.com or by connecting on Facebook, or Twitter.
