CSU gets alert system runningStudents, staff receive messages in minutes By Diane Knich (Contact)
The Post and Courier
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Students, staff receive messages in minutes From his office computer, Rusty Bruns demonstrated Charleston Southern University's new rapid emergency notification system by typing a test message and sending it to himself. About 45 seconds later, his office phone and cell phone rang. The typed message had been converted to a voice message which Bruns, the school's chief information officer, could listen to on either phone. If a true emergency befalls the campus, he said, Burns now can send a message within minutes to the school's 3,500 students, faculty and staff members. Each person in the system can have emergency notices sent to up to three phone numbers, a pager number and an e-mail address and also can be notified by text message. Bruns said university officials decided that the school needed a more comprehensive notification system to reach students in an emergency after the shootings in April at Virginia Tech. And they found one in TechRadium's Immediate Response Information System, he said. "The goal is for us to reach kids anytime we want, anywhere," Bruns said Tuesday. They had previously relied primarily on posting updates on the university's Web site, Bruns said. TechRadium's system will cost the university about $10,000 each year, he said. He chose that particular system because in addition to sending emergency notifications, it also prints out a report that verifies that the message got to the intended recipient, he said. That's important, he said, not only for safety reasons but because it will protect the university from lawsuits from people who claim they weren't notified. In the future, the system also will be used for more routine communication, he said. In the wake of the tragedy at Virginia Tech, other local and state colleges, universities and school systems are considering putting in place similar notification systems. At the University of South Carolina, an expanded notification system will be in place later this month, spokesman Russ McKinney said. Rachel Smalley, a senior and a resident assistant in one of Charleston Southern's residence halls, said the new system "takes the pressure off administrators and R.A.s." In the past, Smalley said, she had to make about 40 phone calls to notify those who lived on her floor about emergency situations. Julia Grinn, a senior from Rochester, Ind., said she will include her cell phone number as well as her husband's and mother's cell phone numbers in the system. If something dangerous is happening on campus, "our families will know immediately, and that brings a lot of comfort to students," she said. And she'll request that the system also send her a text message. Smalley and Grinn both said the best way to reach most students is by text message. Grinn said it's difficult to imagine a violent incident like the shootings at Virginia Tech happening at Charleston Southern, but it's good to have an effective emergency notification system in place just in case. She expects it will mostly be used to notify students about hurricanes. Smalley said she thinks parents will appreciate the new system even more than students. She said her parents complained that the school didn't communicate with them enough when she was sent home during a hurricane threat in the early days of her freshman year. Bruns said he thinks such notification systems are becoming increasingly important to campus communities. "In the future, parents and students will demand it," he said. Reach Diane Knich at 937-5491 or dknich@postandcourier.com. |
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Comments
This article has 10 comment(s)
Posted by Harpo on September 5, 2007 at 1:14 a.m. (Suggest removal)
The low country needs to follow up on this idea to
provide an area-wide system for high priority local
news flashes, child abduction alerts, weather alarms,
etc. The system should be free for all who sign up and
provide their cell telephone numbers for the database.
Text messages from this system should also be free for
subscribers.
Nice technology; well done.
Posted by majorjohnson on September 5, 2007 at 8:07 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Free? You mean it doesn't cost anything to do it? Wow...just like welfare and food stamps and universal health care! It just falls out of the sky and doesn't cost anyone anything...
Posted by onedeep on September 5, 2007 at 10:38 a.m. (Suggest removal)
The irony of the system is that CSU has a policy in place that does not allow its students to connect to the Internet while in class, as well as most professors requiring their students to turn off their cell phones. Which means that for any student in class, odds are they aren't going to get the message.
Posted by Harpo on September 5, 2007 at 11:55 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Free by virtue of state taxes, like the 911 service.
Also, I would expect that students actually in classes
would be notified by alternate means. Phones should
be turned off in class.
Posted by majorjohnson on September 5, 2007 at 4:39 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Ah, free as in someone else pays for it...gotcha harpo.
Ain't it a great country...I work for it, you take it, and then you say it was free...
Posted by Harpo on September 5, 2007 at 8:27 p.m. (Suggest removal)
What a totally ignorant thing to pen. I pay taxes the
same as you do and have for the last 40 years; why
the hell would you insult me that way?
I'm trying to suggest that a county-wide system such
as this would be a boon to the public for important
items such as child abductions, tornadoes, terrorism
threat levels, and other emergencies. Most people pack
a cellphone and that's a great way get the word out.
I don't think the system would break the bank, either,
since the cellphone networks are already in place.
Anybody else think maybe this would be a good idea?
Posted by majorjohnson on September 5, 2007 at 11:05 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Gosh harpo...wasn't meaning to insult you so much as wake you up. Someone hitting the send it to everyone button on their cell phone requires more than the button push. It takes networks grabbing the send, databases pulling the addresses, client side scripts compiling the messages...you have no idea how much server and bandwidth cost is involved to do this. And none of it is free, things like that are actually expensive, especially at the scale you're talking about. If there is any ignorance involved, I would say it's someone saying that expensive resources are free because you aren't aware of the costs and you don't have to bear them.
Not intending to offend, but I'm in the IT field, and people who think they can just "do" things for free electronically because all it takes is clicking something are just not aware of the expense of that click. Just like folk who get "free" health care or "free" food don't realize the expense involved in giving it to them...it's just free you know.
Posted by Harpo on September 5, 2007 at 11:18 p.m. (Suggest removal)
With the cell networks already in place, all that's
needed is a smaller system to send alerts to the
networks, as well as an agreement with the providers,
for subsequent broadcast out as group text messages.
As for IT, I have MCSEs for NT4, 2K and XP/Srvr2003,
so I may actually have an inkling of what bandwidth is.
The bandwidth issues will belong to the providers,
not the county system that sends the alerts to the
providers.
Posted by eyfigueroa on September 6, 2007 at 8:40 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Kudos Harpo!
Posted by majorjohnson on September 6, 2007 at 9:40 a.m. (Suggest removal)
You may have in inkling of what bandwidth is, but you can't be much of an IT professional if you think it's free. What you're saying is that the multiple providers should just handle the extra capacity and not charge for it. I guess you also think billions of spam emails have no infrastructure costs.
Maybe you should have spent some time in business economics so you'd have an inkling that this can't be done for free.