Monday, May 14, 2007
post on class material..
This article was covered shortly after the Virginia Tech tragedy last month, and it came across as very important to me. The article discusses how long it took Virginia Tech to notify its students of the situation at hand, for mediums like email and blogs on the school website were used instead of faster things such as text messages. In class we made the argument that the new instant tools should be used, and there is no doubt in my mind that if the students had received mass text messages then the result would have been different. I came across another article that revealed 16.6 million students have cell phones, which is nearly 95% of the college student population. Because of this startling statistic, schools such as Florida, Penn State, and Syracuse have either installed or are considering to install this pricey, yet effective, means to alert students.
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2 comments:
There definatly needs to be some sort mass alerting system in place not only for students, but in work places and other places where the masses gather. Currently at delaware there are only web alerts which is attached to critical university pages. It needs to be stepped up to the next level. Considering not everyone is on univiersy pages when using the web. Text messaging is the way to go and Udel needs to implement this for the safety of this community.
I definetly agree. Obviously it would be nearly impossible to alert everyone if there is an emergency, I think there should be a few preventative measures not just one. Text messaging is a great idea, but not everyone has text messaging on their phones. I think they should also do e-mail alerts and web alerts to try and reach the people that do not receive test messages. I also think Udel should inform the student body of the preventative measures that would be taken in case of an emergency.
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