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On the heels of the Virginia Tech shooting last April, colleges and universities across the country are taking steps to improve security on their campuses and the University of Maine is no exception.
“We carefully considered our campus, our campus community, and the needs of this community,” said Dean of Students Dr. Robert Dana. With that in mind, public safety and communication officials have established a new multi-dimensional approach to security and emergency notification this semester. Its cornerstone is a web alert system, referred to as the UMaine.txt program.
This new messaging system is from the national web-based campus services provider e2campus.com. The system will alert students of emergencies on campus or class cancellations due to severe weather. The system can deliver messages to registered e-mail address, cell phones, PDAs, pagers, RSS readers and Google, AOL or Yahoo home pages. Students and campus employees can register up to two phones on the Public Safety page of the University website and select which types of notifications they would like to receive.
In the case of an emergency, a newly installed siren atop the Class of 1944 Hall will sound, alerting students and faculty across campus to seek further information and instructions. At this point, UMaine.txt subscribers would be able to check their cell phones for emergency information in the form of a text message. All others would be encouraged to log on to the spotlight section of www.umaine.edu, check the Announcements and Alerts folder on First-class or call 581-INFO for instructions.
Students should understand that this is a free service and one that UMaine safety officials highly recommend taking advantage of. Director of University Relations, Joe Carr, emphasizes that “It will create a multi-faceted way to communicate accurate information and advice about how every person in the UMaine community can stay safe.”
The number of subscribers is increasing every day, reaching over 2,200 students and faculty as of September 7. This trend is expected to continue, due in part to the convenience of cell phones. As Amy Leader, an undecided second year student, said, “It’s easier to reach everyone this way because everyone has cell phones.”
The program does have a few shortcomings that students and faculty should be made aware of. For example, some cell phone carriers such as Tracfone cannot support this text message alert system. Additionally, an emergency text message, like any other text message, would be limited to a certain number of characters. In the case of an emergency, subscribers would receive only the most urgent and basic information along with instructions on how to learn more.
UMaine students have different ideas about the implementation of this new emergency warning system. Second year sociology and environmental policy major Dan Bourgeoiscapozzi said, “I can see why the University is doing it, but it costs a lot of money [to] run the system that could be going toward education.” Others, like first year engineering major Maria Fournier, appreciate the program’s less serious aspects. “I think it’s handy that it texts you on snow days,” she said.
UMaine administrators like Dr. Robert Dana maintain that this system, coupled with other smart safety practices, can make campus a more secure place to be. “UMaine is a very safe place where everyone cares for each other, but good sense means we watch out for and report problems,” Dana said. “Early identification is the best prevention.”
