Shooting on TSU’s Campus

July 23, 2009 by theo.johnson
Filed under: Blog Entries, Community, Entertainment & Sports, Society & Culture

Why can’t we just all get along? I’m sure you’ve heard by now on the national news that there was a shooting at a community-sponsored event yesterday on the campus of Texas Southern University. I think what bothers me the most is that I thought from the media coverage that it was a school-sponsored event gone bad. The college has already had issues with it’s reputation, so an event such as this cannot help in any way. I grew up on the campus of Texas Southern. My dad spent most of his career working in the Law School, so I hate to see news like this come out of good school. This is why I felt the need to blog some of the information I’ve gathered.

The event was on Trae Day, a day awarded to Trae Da Truth by the mayor of Houston, Bill White, and Council Member Peter Brown, in honor of his outstanding work within the community. The day was to feature various hip-hop artists and pass out school supplies to kids within the community. Families were encouraged to attend and prominent members of the community were invited. In a statement from TSU’s President, John M. Rudley, some additional information was shared via their website:

Dear Texas Southern University students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends:
You may have heard that an incident occurred on the edge of the Texas Southern University campus Wednesday night, which is currently being investigated by the Houston Police Department. According to detectives, six individuals attending a community-hosted event on the campus were shot in what is believed to be the result of an earlier altercation that took place last week between individuals from the Fresno and Missouri City area, which are 20+ miles southwest of Texas Southern. The injured were taken to area hospitals where their injuries were deemed serious but not life-threatening. A TSU student was among the injured. He was wounded in the leg and was released to his home from the hospital. All the other individuals wounded in the incident are from Missouri City.

Though this appears to be an isolated incident that unfortunately grew from an occurrence 20 miles away from the campus, it has a direct impact on our university and may raise some concerns on the part of our students and their parents, as well as faculty and staff. We want to assure our University community and the students and parents who are about to become part of Texas Southern University that we are working diligently to strengthen our campus security and enhance the safety of everyone attending classes or visiting our campus.
During the past year, we have made the following improvements to our security systems:

* increased lighting across the campus, both the interior and the perimeter areas
* increased video surveillance cameras across campus, including new sites around the perimeter of the university
* increased police presence and patrols during peak hours
* increased foot patrols across the campus
* added bicycle patrols
* provided continuous inspection of the emergency call boxes to ensure functionality
* provided escort services for students, faculty, staff and visitors
* increased building access security measures
* increased specialized training for all police officers, including criminal investigation training, and training for police leadership through the FBI National Academy.

The Department of Public Safety at TSU will continue to assist Houston Police in their investigation of the incident.
Wednesday’s incident occurred just after the completion of a community event developed and hosted by private citizens and community organizations that included the distribution of school supplies and other community-based resources.
Texas Southern University is proud to serve as a venue to important community events, particularly those benefitting our students and academic programs. Nonetheless, a moratorium is being placed on all outside groups requesting use of Texas Southern facilities while we undergo a complete review of our policies and requirements for use of our facilities and campus.

We absolutely believe that the Texas Southern campus remains safe and that this is an isolated tragic incident. We are committed to ensuring the safety of all members of our community and will continue to identify ways that we can increase the security of our campus.
Sincerely,

John M. Rudley, President

In my opinion, it’s an event that was meant for good, gone bad. I can’t comment on any of the featured artists because I haven’t even heard of most of them. The main purpose of this post was to share this statement with the readers of this blog. There are two sides to every story. As a blogger, when I’m able, I just want to see both sides get attention.

Here are some additional links that I’ve found regarding the incident: