Today’s first ever Gaucho Gathering event aims to provide information to the campus community about what to do in the event of a shooting at UCSB.

Hosted by the UCSB Dept. of Public Safety, the event begins at 5:30 p.m. in the UCen Flying A Room and will feature an active shooter presentation and Q&A session with UCPD Chief of Police Dustin Olson. The event is part of a quarterly crime prevention workshop about public safety in the face of violent threats and attacks.

“It’s a course we’ve done before throughout the community and we’ve gotten good feedback on it, so we feel really confident about the presentation as a whole,” Olson said. “It’ll be an opportunity to meet faculty, ask questions to me personally regarding the topic, win some prizes and enjoy free food.”

Olson added that identity theft prevention is one of several potential topics that UCPD lectures in the future will tackle.

Sgt. Mike McCoy of the Isla Vista Foot Patrol said the UC Police Department and the IVFP have specific protocols to follow when addressing such threats as campus shooters.

“We work together to address the chaos and direct those in the line of fire away from the threat in the best way possible,” McCoy said. “Oftentimes that means locking the school down completely, in which IVFP would pair up with UC police officers to sweep through the school and handle the situation in the safest way possible.”

Adam Gross, a third-year film & media studies major, said students can benefit from attending the lecture and learning how to react during a campus shooting.

“With the numerous tragedies that have happened to campuses across the nation, I think it’s crucial to know what to do, where to go and who to turn to in such a situation as a campus shooting,” Gross said. “I’ll be going out of sheer interest. That, along with the food and prizes they’ll be giving out.”