Annual mock crime scenario brings together more academic programs than ever before
Theatre Arts students in special effects makeup posed as hostages. Elementary Education students simulated rapid response to armed threats. Exercise Science students monitored heart rates through stress and duress. Criminal Justice students conducted building clears and simulated arrests. All these hands-on lessons are part of each academic program’s curriculum, but for a single day this spring, they all came together as part of one multi-disciplinary mock crime scenario.
The mock crime scenario is an intensive experiential learning exercise conducted each year, but for this year’s scenario the team of students and professors behind the event expanded to meet the evolving needs of the college’s hands-on learning curriculum, the PEAK Experience, and included more students, academic programs, and alumni than ever before.
Criminal Justice and Psychology double-major Hal Boles ’26 was part of the team of students who helped plan the scenario as part of the criminal justice course Emotional Survival Skills. The course is taught by Associate Instructor of Criminal Justice Derrick Lail and is designed to give students the skills to handle the high-stress, often dangerous situations that may come with a career in the criminal justice field.
“We were in charge of planning pretty much everything with Mr. Lail. On the first day of planning, we started spit balling ideas and someone brought up the hostage scenario. Then it developed into multiple somewhat connected scenarios,” Boles said.
Where in the past the mock crime scenario might have involved Criminal Justice students in the program’s policing class with Theatre Arts students acting as victims, perpetrators, and witnesses, this year’s scenario offered a wider array of experiential learning opportunities.
Criminal Justice students conducted a house search and a sweep for evidence, after which they conducted a traffic stop on an actor who would go on to pose the armed threat in the simulated classroom. There, Elementary Education students practiced rapid response, securing their surroundings before students in the policing course subdued the threat.
"Every licensed K–12 teacher in North Carolina must undergo yearly active shooter training as part of their job. Most of my education students have been through this as K–12 students, so they already have that perspective. However, as future teachers, the shift in focus and responsibility changes,” Professor of Teacher Education Susan Dean said. “Derrick provides an opportunity for them to have practice in the kind of effective adult stewardship needed in an active school shooter scenario.”
Later in the afternoon, a hostage scenario provided an opportunity for students in PCOM 103, a communications course taught by Associate Professor of Communications and Media Studies Abby Arnold-Patti, to practice interpersonal communication skills as hostage negotiators, while a static crime scene allowed students in an archaeology-focused first-year seminar course to collect and understand evidence from a different perspective.
“The students were challenged to establish empathy, even with the perpetrator, as they attempted to de-escalate the situation. They needed to listen carefully and responsively to the narrative and the beliefs of the perpetrator and attempt to identify with them, while working to persuade them to release the hostages,” Arnold-Patti said. “All of these are skills that we study and practice in the interpersonal communication course, as they are central to professional and relational success across contexts, however this scenario presents a uniquely challenging and important context in which clear, compassionate communication can quite literally save lives.”
With nine courses participating in the scenario and incorporating it into their coursework, the mock crime scenario exemplified the mission of the PEAK Experience by giving students the opportunity to test their skills in a real-world environment before ever leaving campus.
