Campus was never officially locked down after Raja Fayad was shot to death by his ex-wife Sungee Kwon in the Public Health Research Center Thursday, according to USC President Harris Pastides.
Pastides said USC has different protocols for active shooter situations that include locking down the campus. However, police determined Thursday's incident was a murder-suicide at the scene, and there was no active shooter.
"There wasn't a need for a student across campus to be in a classroom that was locked down," he said. "I think that was misunderstood to a certain level, and students probably wondered why [campus wasn't locked down] when it was a murder-suicide."
Pastides said any lock down-like actions taken were the initiative of people in each building, which is why the process as a whole may have appeared "heterogeneous."
"If there were to be what I would call a lockdown situation, it would have been universal and it would have been communicated universally," he said.
Administrative officials met Friday to discuss analyzing USC's alert system. Pastides said university officials would give campus a "report card" of sorts, rating how well emergency systems worked, something they will not be "defensive" about.
"We're not going to be why about criticizing ourselves when that might be needed," he said. "I know many good things happened, but surely there are opportunities to learn, even though one never hopes we'll need to do this again. But we never know."
Pastides visited the Public Health Research Center Friday after the crime scene had been, he said, cleaned up for the most part.
USC spokesman Jeff Stensland said last week he was unsure when the system would be reevaluated next.