Shootings at two historically Black universities this past weekend—and other HBCUs earlier this month—disrupted homecoming events and left campuses reeling. The incidents came at a time when students and staff were already on edge, after violent threats caused lockdowns at multiple HBCU campuses last month. HBCU leaders across the country have been ramping up campus security measures in response.
On Saturday, someone fired a gun on campus during homecoming weekend at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, killing a visitor from Delaware and injuring six people, including a current student and an alum. University leaders suspended classes Monday for a “day of healing and reflection.” Gunshots near Howard University in Washington, D.C., also left four individuals injured Friday night, though Howard officials confirmed in a statement that no one involved in the confrontation, or hurt by it, was affiliated with the institution.
Earlier this month, three people carrying firearms—including one who fired his weapon—were arrested during homecoming at Southern University and A&M College in Louisiana, though no one was hurt. Shootings at South Carolina State University’s homecoming killed a 19-year-old woman visiting campus and injured another homecoming attendee. The victims and an individual arrested for possessing a firearm weren’t students, but the campus remained unsettled.
“This tragedy has deeply affected our students and we’re helping them work through the trauma,” said the university’s president, Alexander Conyers, at an Oct. 6 news briefing. Two shootings also broke out at Mississippi HBCUs, Jackson State University and Alcorn State University, during October homecoming events, killing one victim at Alcorn State.
John Pierre, chancellor of Southern University and A&M College, emphasized that these types of incidents happen across higher ed. Shots were fired at a Louisiana State University football game this month, injuring two people. And a shooting at Florida State University last spring killed two people and injured six others.
The on-campus killing of conservative pundit Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University was a “real wake-up call” to Southern University and higher ed institutions across the country that campuses are vulnerable to such violence, Pierre said. That call grew even louder when, only a day after Kirk’s death, at least seven HBCUs, including Southern, went on lockdown in response to terroristic threats, reminiscent of a surge of bomb threats to the institutions in 2022.
“Especially with respect to those threats, we began to look at our security issues,” Pierre said. “We began to harden security wherever we could—in ways that were significant enough to make people appreciate what we were doing, but at the same time, not oppressive.”
HBCUs tend to experience more regular threats than other institutions, said Lodriguez Murray, senior vice president of public policy and government affairs at the United Negro College Fund, which represents private HBCUs. A UNCF research brief found that HBCUs received 76 threats in the last three years, affecting 51 out of the 101 institutions in the country and disrupting campus operations on 77 different days.
“HBCUs are the only types of colleges that are routinely receiving these types of threats around large-scale events, and terroristic threats, on an unfortunately consistent basis,” Murray said.
Bolstering Security
In response, HBCUs across the country are enhancing their campus security.
Since the bomb threats in 2022, campuses have refined their protocols for responding to threats and strengthened their relationships with federal and local law enforcement, said Harry Williams, president and CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, which represents public HBCUs. Now many are expanding campus protections, such as installing more on-campus cameras and hiring more police staff.
Pierre said his institution did both this fall. With support from the Louisiana Law Enforcement Justice Foundation and state funds, Southern University has also installed more blue light stations, moved to hire more campus officers and acquired additional license plate readers to better identify who’s coming onto campus. The university has also started to restrict who can come to campus through checkpoints after certain hours, and it used drone surveillance at homecoming events this year.
“We want to make sure that we have everybody understand that we’re enhancing security and response efforts,” Pierre said. “We also want to deter people who are not members of our community, faculty, staff and students from coming on the campus and doing things that they shouldn’t be doing.”
South Carolina State University had 200 law enforcement personnel stationed on campus during homecoming; since 2022, it has installed hundreds of surveillance cameras and added a gun-sniffing dog to its security protocols, among other measures, Conyers, the university’s president, said in his briefing.
“We continually review and improve our security operations,” Conyers said.
Murray emphasized that efforts like these require resources HBCUs don’t always have. For example, two years ago, Edward Waters University in Florida had only a few security personnel on staff when confronted with a would-be assailant, who went on to commit a mass shooting at a Dollar Tree near campus after he was denied entry, Murray said.
UNCF is advocating for Congress to set aside funds from FEMA’s Nonprofit Security Grant Program for HBCUs to beef up campus surveillance and security. Murray also called on the Federal Bureau of Investigation to track down perpetrators of terroristic threats so they can be “brought to justice” and deter copycats. He believes such moves would diminish on-campus shootings as well.
“If we do what’s necessary in terms of surveillance and security for the terroristic threats, we will be in a much better position for any other threats that emerge on campus property, and so we view this as a singular issue,” Murray said.
Balancing Priorities
HBCU presidents find themselves striving to strike a difficult balance: making campuses open and welcoming while also keeping them safe, Williams noted.
He said threats to HBCU campuses are instigated by people unaffiliated with the universities “almost 100 percent of the time.” Fights break out between nonstudents drawn to campus events or threats come from “some outside agitating person or group” trying to disrupt campus life.
“Most college campuses are open, and you want that openness,” he said. Students don’t want to feel “locked in.” But at the same time, “we tell parents, when you drop your son or daughter off that they are going to be safe and they’re going to be in a place where people are interested in not only their emotional well-being but making sure that they’re physically taken care of, too.”
HBCU presidents are working together to try to achieve that balance. Murray said he received requests to hold a session at TMCF’s annual convening of HBCU leaders focused on swapping best practices on campus safety.
Campus leaders hope to “use that as an avenue to talk about what are some of the steps that they’ve put in place to protect their students and their communities” while “also keeping the community open, keeping the festivities going,” Williams said, “because you don’t want to be in a situation where you have to cancel homecoming because of fear of outside agitators.”
Campus leaders also know they can’t please everyone. Some Southern University alumni told WAFB9, a local news station, that they were uncomfortable with the ramped-up security measures at homecoming this year, while others said they felt safer. Pierre believes the university mostly has alumni support and is doing its best to make campus both accessible and secure, though he said he’s open to feedback.
“There was more security than most people would have been accustomed to. But I think that’s necessary, given the heightened level of awareness we need to have,” he said. “This is the reality within the United States,” especially in an open-carry state where strict campus prohibitions on firearms aren’t always respected by visitors, he added.
He said the priority is students knowing they’re safe on campus.
“When these security concerns come up, that takes away from our mission,” Pierre said. “We want our students to know that they can come here and pursue educational opportunities that are going to be transformational—and anything that threatens that transformation, we take seriously, and we’re not going to allow that to thwart us in accomplishing our mission.”
