It could have been worse.

Excessive damage could have been done.

And someone could have been seriously hurt.

Thankfully, though, no one was injured on Jan. 16 after shots were fired into Irwin Hall’s north door.

But were students even notified about the shooting through the campus notification system, B-Alert?

No.

B-Alert was not put into use after the shooting that night with the reason being that police had already made it to the scene, and most students were not even on campus because of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

Whether or not most of Baker’s students were on campus that night, because of the holiday when the shooting took place, is beside the point.

Even if only half of the students were on campus when it happened, it still would have been nice for those students if the university would have notified everyone of what happened.

Because really, isn’t that the whole point of having B-Alert, to get notifications about weather cancellations and campus emergencies? It seems like this should have qualified as a campus emergency.

Even though only 34 percent of students were signed up to receive notifications from the B-Alert system at the time of the incident, it still would have been nice for those students to at least receive a text message from the university about the shooting.

Hearing it straight from the university would have been better than learning it from watching the news, or by getting a phone call from concerned parents, making sure their son or daughter was safe.

The good news out of all of this is now steps are being made in order to better notify students of such incidents.

And with more nighttime security being added to Baker’s campus, students should not feel threatened or alarmed when walking around campus at night, or any other time of the day for that matter.

So now, if something worse were to happen on campus, Baker will be better prepared to alert students of whatever that potential danger might be.

And as far as getting more students signed up for B-Alert in the future, after this incident and the recent campus closings due to snow this week, this should be a good sign for more students to get signed up. This would make this system even more useful in keeping students safe and alert to what’s going on at Baker.

After all, just like the saying goes, it’s better to be safe than sorry.