The laid on the ground outside, quiet and still. She had curled herself up; her knees brought close, offering false comfort. The fall had hurt. There was no time to brace herself — she needed to get away.

     He frantically ran around, not giving the girl one more glance. She was no longer the girl that got him arrested earlier. He was barely even yelling then, he thought. At that moment he had other concerns: His remaining classmates emotionally frozen inside; some of them ran — campus safety was sure to be on its way; the local police department after that, and later, SWAT.

     It was just him now — him and his blue plastic pistol.

     A popular tactic to help train for active shooter events is to produce active shooter training scenarios. Intruder response training has become a regular practice for many campuses, school districts and law enforcement agencies, yet can present responsive options for the community as well.

     Located off the shore of Lake Michigan, the Concordia University Wisconsin produced their first-ever training for an active shooter situation late March 2009. The scenario included the University's campus safety department, law enforcement, county SWAT, the Department of Emergency Preparedness: Office of Emergency Management, the local hospital and high school as well as a few acting students from the University's theatre department.

     Starting a long period of planning, Concordia University Wisconsin had begun the event's preparation in response to the tragedies of Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois. While careful tactics were carried out, the training revealed more about communications than was previously considered.

     "Each time there was a new disaster shooting, such as Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois, we attempt to learn from each incident," says Mario Valdes, Director of Campus Safety of Concordia University Wisconsin. His department tried to learn what some of the deterrents were and the things those responding would have done differently in hindsight.

     To Valdes, it was communications. "Some were lacking communications and lacked educating the public — the students and staff — to look for certain signs and then to share that information," he says.