NCS4 Director Marciani to Participate in White House Safety Discussion
Tue, 02/26/2013 - 02:04pm | By: Van Arnold
Dr. Lou Marciani, director of the National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security (NCS4) at The University of Southern Mississippi, has been invited to participate in a panel discussion at the White House, focusing on gun violence and emergency action plans.
Titled: “Creating Model Emergency Management Plans,” the roundtable event will be held from 12:30 p.m.-5 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 27 inside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the White House.
On Jan. 16 President Barack Obama announced a plan to protect the nation's children and communities by reducing gun violence. In addition to calling for specific legislative action, the President announced that his Administration is taking 23 executive actions to reduce gun violence – including an executive action to create model emergency management plans for schools, institutions of higher education and houses of worship.
“To be invited to such an important discussion at the White House is a very humbling reward for all the hard work that has been done at the National Center since we began this mission six years ago,” said NCS4 Director Dr. Lou Marciani.
“Over that time we have developed safety and security risk management models and training capabilities for over 800 universities and 3,000 professionals. Since November, we have been working with the National Federation of State high School Associations and National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association to assessing and addressing safety and security issues facing interscholastic athletic programs and after-school activities nationwide. We look forward to sharing our best practices for training and preparedness, while also gaining some valuable insight about safety and security protocol from others.”
Educators, law enforcement officials, emergency management professionals, faith leaders, mental health experts and victims of gun violence will take part in the discussion. The program will consist of three panels focusing on the emergency management needs of schools, institutions of higher education and houses of worship.
Established in 2006, the National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security was created to provide an interdisciplinary academic environment to further increase sport security awareness, improve sport security policies and procedures and enhance emergency response through evacuation, recovery operations and crowd management training.
For more information about NCS4 and the Sport Evacuation training course call 601.266.6183 or visit www.ncs4.com