After a mass shooting in April at Florida State University that left two people dead, officials plan to evaluate building security on campuses across Florida and hold a “safety summit” in October, university system Chancellor Ray Rodrigues said Thursday.
Lockdown drills and security assessments planned
Rodrigues told the State University System’s Board of Governors that campus leaders will assess building security and the ability to conduct what he called a “lockdown drill.” He said the goal is to complete assessments by the end of the summer to allow time for any related budget requests during the 2026 legislative session.
“Specifically, we want to know if the doors can be locked from the inside, and if there are windows in the doors, can those be covered or protected?” Rodrigues said.
October summit to focus on best practices
The October summit will give universities an opportunity to share best practices and review the results of their safety assessments.
“The goal there would be to identify what we can do to improve across each of our university campuses, as well as identify common concerns so that we will know if we want to make any policy requests of the Legislature for the 2026 session,” Rodrigues said.
The April 2025 FSU shooting
Phoenix Ikner, an FSU student, faces charges of first-degree murder and attempted murder in the April 17 mid-day shooting that killed FSU dining coordinator Robert Morales and Aramark Collegiate Hospitality employee Tiru Chabba. Five students were also wounded.
Ikner, who was shot by police during the incident, was released Monday from Tallahassee Memorial Hospital and is now being held in the Wakulla County Jail.
FSU campus police response praised
Rodrigues praised FSU police officers for their swift response to the shooting and confirmed that all five wounded students have been released from the hospital.
“I feel confident in saying the response of the FSU campus police in this situation was nothing short of amazing, and this could have been a much, much worse tragedy than it was,” he said. “Obviously, tragic to have students shot and to have any loss of life. But the quick response of the FSU campus police prevented this from being much, much, much worse.”
Past lessons from Parkland massacre inform current efforts
While it is too early to know what the new security assessments will reveal, Rodrigues noted that Florida has taken significant steps to improve school security since the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, which left 17 people dead and 17 others injured.
In the aftermath, lawmakers and then-Gov. Rick Scott enacted a package of school safety measures, and the Legislature has revisited the issue multiple times in subsequent years. The state also created the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission within the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to study school safety and make recommendations.
