This came up at the Dean of Students Advisory Board meeting last week, and I briefly mentioned it at last night's Shared Governance Committee meeting...BUT...
Does anyone have strong opinions regarding a cell phone text-messaging system that would send out details/instructions to students in the case of a campus-wide safety emergency?
The majority of members on the Board seemed to think that the general student body would most likely not sign-up for the service and therefore it would be a waste of time and effort to continue to pursue the initiative.
Personally, I would probably sign-up for it. I bet a significant portion of incoming freshmen would as well if it was part of activating their MyUW account. Sophomores through grads? Not so sure. So, worth continuing to pursue?
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Have other universities moved in this direction? On the whole, I think it's a good idea.
I guess my problem with it is: I do not accept text messages because it charges me to accept them. If the system were in place, while it seems one would not need to sign up for it, a student might feel obligated to do so rather than risk being uninformed.
It also might lead more students to leave their phone on in class. :(
You should make it a part of SOAR and incorporate UW housing in on this. I think people would, but like voting for ASM, you need to DRAG them into it.
UW Housing works with campus advisories by relaying info over their PA system (one of the few campus entities to have one, but that may change). Unfortunately, breakdown in communication comes at the personal level there, when even many house fellows don't know of the emergency and thus can't tell their residents door-to-door.
I agree with the CB in that it needs to be done at SOAR, whatever "it" may be. It's really the only way to reach ALL freshmen, and their parents. Perhaps I misunderstood your reference of UW Housing earlier, now that I think about it, but, yes, that is another effective way to reach a large proportion of incoming students.
I personally would sign up for this system. I do receive text messages normally and they only cost about 10 cents each, even incoming ones. That may be a price that enough students are willing to pay to receive only the most dire campus emergency alerts.
However, that does not mean that the text message system will be the only way to relay information. Associate Dean Helmkamp discussed many more methods, all of which would be implemented: PA system (right now, Housing... I would like to see it in more places. I know Memorial Library has one), txt msgs, "reverse 911" (where building supervisors are told what they need to know and they relay it down), announcements on wisc.edu homepage, facebook (especially through John Lucas's group about Campus Emergency Alerts), the Parent Program run by VIP, etc.
As for in-class, I do think that professors need to be notified in some way so they can announce it to their students. Even if that means having gofers run around all of Humanities going to individual classrooms. Ultimately, it is the word-of-mouth that will work.
How about working on prevention services instead? Text messaging is not going to make me feel safe.
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