Inland colleges consider all-in-one communications systems to reach students quickly
Press-Enterprise 4/18/07
Previously, local college campuses had cobbled together communication strategies using e-mail, automated telephone dialers, campus and local radio, and programmable signs. They have contemplated using a police helicopter with a loudspeaker to notify students, various campus spokespeople said.
But new all-in-one systems simultaneously telephone, send text messages, instant computer messages, faxes and e-mails to more of the devices now popular with students, reaching them whether they are on campus, at a coffee house, at home, or in transit. Some systems go beyond merely leaving a message, permitting the receiver to signal whether they are OK or in distress.
"Some of us have been talking about it, but (Monday's) event have prompted more significant attention," said Larry Becker, spokesman for La Sierra University.
Cal State San Bernardino is also looking at getting a mass-notification system, spokesman Joe Gutierrez said. The campus, which was evacuated during the 2003 wildfires and which closed earlier this school year due to high winds, is not set up to deliver individual messages to students' wireless phones or text-messaging systems, Gutierrez said.
UC Riverside has been contemplating getting a mass-notification system, not just because of Monday's tragedy in Virginia, but in reaction to the communications problems that plagued colleges damaged or flooded during Hurricane Katrina, campus spokeswoman Kris Lovekin said.
The now-multibillion-dollar mass-notification industry grew quickly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, exposed the difficulty of communicating within large buildings, companies and schools during emergencies, said Mark Ladin, vice president of 3N, a Glendale company that markets some of the systems now in use nationwide.
"Citizens were demanding to be better informed about things that were going on," Ladin said. The five-year-old company has 350 clients, including schools, colleges, large companies and cities.
The number of potential-client calls jumped Monday as news spread of the communication gap, he said.
"On 9/11 or in the events like at Virginia Tech, they realize that the biggest failure during times of crisis is the ability to communicate," Ladin said.
The University of Redlands uses an automated system to send messages to dorms, where advisers use address lists to send e-mail and pages to students.
Privacy Worries
The campus has considered the all-in-one systems but a weakness is that students and parents fail to update the college when they change phone numbers and e-mail addresses, said Char Burgess, campus vice president and dean of student life.
Protecting the privacy of such information, if used by a communication company, "adds an interesting wrinkle," Burgess said.
Cal Tech in Pasadena is trying out such a system and members of its emergency-communications committee who tested it said it swiftly put out phone, e-mail and text messages to up to nine contacts for each person.
"I got a phone call on my cell, on my home number; I got an e-mail; it called my husband's cell phone, all simultaneously," said Jill Perry, director of media relations at Cal Tech. "It's a way to blast out a message to everyone."
A student sitting in class might not take attention away from a professor to access a voice mail or a laptop computer e-mail, but would very likely check an incoming text message, Perry said.
Complications
Cal Tech's system, by Sherman Oaks-based NTI Group, is not yet in campuswide use. That's partly because the committee has not decided how to merge the university's database of student, faculty and staff telephone numbers with the system, and how to collect and manage all the additional contact information from university community members.
"This is where it gets really complicated," Perry said. Hundreds of new students arrive each year, hundreds more leave, and they might change their contact information as well. Keeping the system current is a challenge, she said.
Cal Tech would notify students of an earthquake that affects the school or transportation safety, or other campus emergencies such as a crime or fire, she said. The university database also can be sorted to direct messages to subgroups, for example, students and faculty who have classes in a specific building, she said.
NTI Group sells different systems for K-12, local governments and military bases, advertising a reach of 400,000 message recipients in a half-hour.