Tech itself has integrated the VT Alerts system, an emergency notification system that sends messages via text and voice messages to non-VT phones, e-mails to non-VT accounts and instant messages through AOL, Yahoo!, and MSN. Students, staff and faculty may voluntarily sign up to be alerted by this system. Additionally, a siren system has been introduced to notify those outside on campus that there is an emergency situation.
"VT Alerts is but one part of a multifaceted system that the university has had for many years now to alert students and staff in critical situations," said Mark Owczarski, Tech university spokesman. The system exists to complement the previously existing one, which broadcasts emergency messages through the university homepage, mass e-mails to university e-mail accounts, phone messages to VT phones and help from the media.
Approximately 18,000 students have subscribed to the new system, representing about 60 percent of the university community.
VT Alerts is used through the company 3n (National Notification Network).
Similar to Tech's new system, the University of Delaware has recently created UD Alerts and also tested the system earlier this week, according to James Flatley, chief of UD police department. The test went well, with 98 percent of texts sent out and 96 percent of e-mails sent and received. Their texts, voice messages and e-mails system are used through the company Send Word Now and are also voluntary.
"We have 27,000 e-mails in the system because we send out e-mails through the university e-mail addresses that everyone is provided with, and we have 10,000 cell phones subscribed to the system," Flatley said.
Not only have alert systems been created and tested at the beginning of this academic year, they've been put to use during recent critical situations.
St. John's University in Queens, N.Y., recently put into effect a text and voice message system with the company Mir3, and when a student strolled around campus with a rifle, the system was tested in a real, critical situation.
Tom Lawrence, vice president for public safety of St. John's, said no one knew that the man was carrying a gun, but they were notified minutes later, and the student was apprehended six minutes after that. Students received messages via the emergency notification system eight minutes later, notifying them that a man with a rifle was apprehended on campus and that everybody should stay in place because they suspected that there was another person who may also be a threat.
"Currently it's about 11,000 subscribed to the system out of about 20,000 people in the university," Lawrence said.
Like St. John's, the University of Wisconsin-Madison has also been forced to find ways to notify their university community of an emergency situation. Because UW-Madison's text messaging service is in development and was not available for use when a suicidal gunman was reported on campus on Sept. 25, the university found that they had to find another way to alert the community.
Jason Whitney, UW-Madison police department sergeant, said the police department works with the university media personnel and IT group to send out mass emails. "Everyone helps to get the message out as quickly as possible," he said.
However, the university also made the quick and innovative decision to utilize one of the most widely trafficked websites on the web, Facebook. For $85, the university posted fliers on the Facebook website to notify their students that there was a situation on campus, said John Lucas, UW-Madison university spokesman. The campus network has over 50,000 members.
"The flier said that there was a campus emergency, students should click here for details, and that was up and running in a very short amount of time during the situation," Lucas said. "It had 40,000 views and of those views, 4,000 of those clicked it and went through to the website, which had more information on the situation."
Lucas stressed that using Facebook was a great, instantaneous tool, but it was only used to complement the e-mails sent out. The voluntary text and voice message system currently in development will also be a complementary tool.
Across the nation, these new notification systems have broadened the scope of mass communication methods and have shown to be innovative and successful in the short time that they have been in operation.
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