While going into the infirmary with a 101.7° fever, a summer B freshman experienced something scarier than a flu diagnosis.
“You're not going to believe what just happened to me,” Ben Milrot wrote in his family group chat.
At 10 a.m. Thursday, Milrot, an 18-year-old UF political science freshman was waiting for his Tamiflu prescription when he was shuffled into a closet, silenced and kept in the dark for an active shooter drill in the pharmacy.
“I was sitting down waiting, and out of nowhere there was a voice over the PA system saying, ‘Attention UF Health. This is an active shooter drill,’” Milrot said.
The pharmacy staff locked the doors, turned off the lights and took Milrot and one other sick student into a closet for 15 minutes while police officers banged on the doors, Milrot said.
“It was a drill, so I might as well act like it was real,” Milrot said. “I was so dizzy, and I was standing there trying to catch myself from falling every 30 seconds.”
This drill was conducted by the UF Student Health Care Center, which is required to do four drills a year by their accrediting agency, the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care, said UF spokesperson Steve Orlando.
One of those drills has to be a fire drill and one of them has to be a code blue, indicating a person needing resuscitation. The SHCC can then choose two other drills, one being the active shooter drill, Orlando said.
It was the third year in a row the center chose an active shooter drill, Orlando said.
The staff in the SHCC are trained for the drills, Orlando said.
Milrot said drills like this are necessary, but he couldn’t understand why it was done in a pharmacy setting rather than a classroom setting.
“It taught me a little how to act in a situation like this, but I was also not thinking straight because I was so sick,” Milrot said. “Then after the drill, we were let out and everyone acted like nothing ever happened.”
