Shelter-in-place adds to security concerns

By Caroline Haviland

After Rider’s second shelter-in-place in two years occurred on Nov. 10, campus security continues to come into question, leaving Public Safety with the need to inform community members how to properly respond to such emergency situations. 

The recent shelter-in-place was in response to a confrontation between a suspect armed with a knife and several people within Poyda Hall, according to a press release from the Lawrence Police. Rider’s last shelter-in-place occurred in April 2023 when the university received an anonymous call threatening gun violence on campus. 

Director of Public Safety Matthew Babcock said in an interview with The Rider News on Nov. 18 that a student’s possession of a weapon on campus is “out of [Public Safety’s] control at a certain point.”

“Unless you want to live in a prison type environment where you’re behind bars and coming through metal detectors and screens,” Babcock said, “but I don’t think anyone wants to go to school that way. … The best we can do is to educate everybody on how to respond appropriately.”

Babcock said he encourages all students to “remain vigilant” to help ensure safety across the university is prioritized. 

Upon the incident’s initial report, Babcock said he made the call to get the shelter-in-place message to the campus community while en route to the residence hall due to the urgency of the situation.

With the police department located down the road, Babcock said law enforcement’s presence on campus was “somewhere in a five-minute range” upon the initial report of the incident. 

“We’re very fortunate because Lawrence Police is only right up the road. And as we saw last Monday, when we called, there were four police cars on this campus moments later,” Babcock said.

The incident resulted in the arrest of junior acting for television, film and theater major Alex Theis, who was charged with aggravated assault, terroristic threats and various weapon offenses. 

Following his arrest, Theis was detained in the Mercer County Correction Center, according to Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office Public Information Officer Casey DeBlasio. Theis’ first court hearing was on Nov. 12, where his release was ordered pending future court proceedings, DeBlasio said. 

Theis’ arrest marks the second time in 2025 that a person was charged with possessing a weapon on Rider’s campus. 

The first incident occurred in spring 2025 when former student Jordan Greene was charged with offenses including possession of a weapon on an educational institution’s grounds and criminal trespass, according to an April 1 press release from Lawrence Police. 

Greene was indicted in July and later had the weapons charges dismissed in October, according to DeBlasio. He is currently in a pretrial intervention program and upon its completion his criminal trespass charge will be dismissed, DeBlasio said. 

Rider’s safety procedure

In a Nov. 17 universitywide email, Public Safety sent out a standard procedure for university community members to follow should there be another shelter-in-place, such as taking shelter in the nearest building, securing any doors and windows and ceasing all activity. 

The communication detailed dates and times for hostile intruder training sessions open to all students, faculty and staff. Babcock said these sessions have taken place since the April 2023 shelter-in-place.

“People can come in and get the full explanation. We can meet with people afterwards and talk specifics because lots of people have concerns about the environments they’re in and how they would react,” Babcock said.

The email also mentioned Rider’s utilization of Rider Alert, which sends out mass communication to the campus community in the event of an emergency.

However, some students said they did not receive an alert during the Nov. 10 shelter-in-place. 

Thomas Fabre, an international student from France, was in class giving a presentation when his classmates informed him of the campus emergency. When Fabre looked at his phone, he did not see the same alert everyone else received. 

Fabre messaged his fellow friends studying abroad, and they also had not gotten the universitywide communication. 

“That could be scary if we were outside and we would not know about that,” Fabre said. 

Babcock said while he had not been made aware of such situations, and would have to work with the Office of Information Technologies to fix this problem, he commended those students for informing those around them of emergency situations.

“Campus security is a shared responsibility of everybody here. There’s only so many Public Safety officers here to keep an eye on things,” Babcock said. “Everybody that comes and goes every day that has a general sense of what’s right and what’s not, it’s up to them to kind of help us watch everything and report it to us.”