The chaotic and bizarre incident in the Quad yesterday raises some serious questions.What would have happened if the student had been less harmless than he apparently was? It’s obvious in hindsight he was not a threat to campus, but it was considerably less so when he was wielding a can of gas and a blade. If he had actually been dangerous, yesterday could have been a tragedy instead of merely a bizarre anecdote.The hysterics attracted the attention of a crowd of students. As the incident unfolded, more students walked into the Quad to watch the show.This is unacceptable and dangerous — if this student had been a more sinister individual, the carnage could be tremendous.But the disturbing problems this incident illustrates don’t stop there. Why did this student have time to drive into campus, unload his belongings and spend some amount of time in and around the Design Building? More importantly, why didn’t the administration take steps to inform the campus?The University’s emergency text message system, a centerpiece of the overall emergency response plan, was not activated. The LSU Police Department claims the situation was not “life-threatening,” and thus the general public did not need to be informed.This distinction is vague, totally subjective and scary. At some point there was a strange car in the heart of campus, and an even stranger man with a can of gas and a large blade. This raised an important question: How obviously dangerous does a situation have to be before it becomes “life-threatening” enough to merit a response?Even if administrators didn’t want to cause panic, they should have used the text message system to assure students that the situation was under control or to advise them to avoid the Quad. By the time the incident was under control, wild rumors had spread — everyone who needed to be on LSU’s campus would have appreciated some official indication they could continue with business as usual. In short, this incident vividly illustrates LSU’s emergency response plan has room for improvement — or at least for some more discussion. It’s a harsh reality that horrible things can and do happen on college campuses — the Feb. 12 shootings at the University of Alabama in Huntsville are a sad reminder. It’s imperative that everyone responsible for our safety learn from yesterday and keep us as safe as possible. Other measures are possible.- – – -Contact the Editorial Board at [email protected]