Ben Bays, Ryan Hitchcock, and Diana Bergemann accepting a regional Emmy for their work on “Surviving an Active Aggressor.” Credit: Courtesy of Ohio Valley chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Ohio State has won awards of all kinds for its academic achievements and athletic accomplishments. In August, it added an Emmy to the list.

Ohio State’s Department of Public Safety and WOSU Public Media won a regional Emmy for their work on “Surviving an Active Aggressor,” which was produced in 2018. 

The video was submitted to the Emmys Short Format Program category, which is just one of 100 categories to which WOSU could have submitted it. It competed against other videos submitted from the Ohio Valley Chapter, including those from Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia, Diana Bergemann, TV producer and editor at WOSU Public Media, said. 

A panel of experts who have previously produced or helped put together a public service announcement judge the ones that are entered, Bergemann said. They judge the quality of production, and it is possible to declare more than one winner. 

“It was a hard award to accept,” Bergemann said. “We were winning an award for the quality of the video, but at the same time, it’s a sad thing to have to tell the story of.”

The Department of Public Safety first teamed up with WOSU Public Media in 2016 to create a video entitled, “Surviving an Active Shooter.”

About six months after the video was posted, there was an attack on the Ohio State campus, which led to an after-action report, in which the university received a response on the situation.  

“They had received some feedback from faculty, staff and students that they were hungry for information and more detail specifically on the hide and the fight portions of the video,”  Dan Hedman, university spokesperson, said. 

Hedman said the Department of Public Safety teamed up with WOSU again to create “Surviving an Active Aggressor,” which demonstrated the practices of run and fight along with tips on how to recognize warning signs and suspicious behavior and how to get resources to help people in these situations. 

WOSU is honored to be able to do this a second time, Bergemann said. 

Other institutions have given the video good feedback, saying it contains good information and makes people think about key points they wouldn’t normally think about, Bergemann said. 

“It has become a platform for other universities who reached out and asked, ‘How did you produce something like that and how do we do the same thing?’” Bergemann said.

The video is now required viewing for all incoming freshmen as a part of their orientation checklist before they come to campus, Hedman said. 

“Awards are great and recognition is nice to show the video was done well, but the biggest reward will be that more and more people will watch it,” Hedman said.