Despite concerns raised by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, campus evacuation plans remain “kind of confidential.”

“You can?t tell 27,000 people what to do,” Police Chief Ken Barnett said. “Besides walking, there are only four ways to get out of this place and the worst thing that could happen is if everyone got in their car and left at one time.”

That is exactly what happened on Sept. 11 when CSU Chancellor Charles Reed closed the Sac State campus. Following the closure most students still on campus went to their cars and got stuck in a three hour-long traffic jam.

But the evacuation plan is not available to faculty, staff and students and remains “kind of confidential,” Barnett said.

The police chief said the school closing that day was not an evacuation, but “a systematic cancellation of classes” and refused to say how campus authorities or students would act differently in the event of an evacuation.

Sac State?s emergency response manual devotes one page to evacuation procedures, stating that in the case of a school wide emergency, President Donald Gerth could order that the Emergency Operations Center be activated.

Barnett would be responsible for operations in the EOC during large-scale emergencies. Further details on the EOC were sparse.

Building coordinators and floor marshals are in place at each building on campus, Barnett said, but the emergency response manual makes no reference to such personnel or their responsibilities in an emergency.

The manual also has no details about what students should do in the case of a terrorist attack, although Barnett said the campus has a full emergency operations plan.

Junior business major Cheri Helm was stuck on the fourth level of the parking garage last September when the campus closed.

“I just sat in my car and listened to a CD,” she said. “But I know that if everyone needed to get off campus in a hurry, that?s not where we should be. I guess we?d all have to walk away from school, but shouldn?t I know that?”