INITIAL ALERTPhone
Approximate reconstruction592 chars
[PLU campus police and Tacoma Police responded within minutes to the mid-afternoon shooting outside a dormitory. Pacific Lutheran University had no mass SMS or email alert system in 2001; emergency notification consisted of campus police radio, physical notification by resident advisors and staff, and phone calls to academic departments. PLU officials gathered students, faculty, and staff at Olson Auditorium that evening to inform them of the shooting, the suspect's death, and the absence of any continuing campus threat. Cowan had shot himself at the scene and posed no further danger.]
This text has been reconstructed from news coverage and may not reflect the exact original wording.
PLU had no mass-notification system in 2001 -- the principal campus-wide communication was an in-person gathering at Olson Auditorium organized by university officials within hours of the shooting
Cowan shot himself after killing Holloway, eliminating any continuing threat and making a campus lockdown unnecessary
The incident predated the post-Virginia Tech era of mandatory mass-notification systems by six years; it is part of the historical record of pre-SMS campus violence