More on Campus Sign Up for Emergency Text Messages
Posted on April 4, 2008On the morning of March 5, the University’s campuswide alert system, developed last year in the wake of the shootings at Virginia Tech, was used for the first time to notify people on campus that a young woman had been found shot to death at about 5 a.m. in a nearby neighborhood.
Long before they knew the victim was Student Body President Eve Carson, nearly 5,200 students, faculty and staff received a text message on their cellular phones beginning about 10:20 a.m. Only those who had signed up to receive the text message alerts were included. Alert messages also were sent to all campus e-mail addresses and all telephones via voice mail, representing about 40,000 people.
On that day, several hundred people who had signed up since January to receive the text message alerts didn’t get that form of alert. The reason: an unprocessed backlog of subscribers.
That situation appears to be improving. By March 24, about 8,400 registrants were in the system and would receive a text message sent through the new Alert Carolina emergency information and warning system. (The exceptions would be registrants whose cell phones were incapable of receiving text, whose service was interrupted or other factors beyond the University’s control).
Registration does not set off an automatic process to enter the registrant in the system. Following registration, a registrant’s name is pulled from the University directory and uploaded to the system. Until recently, UNC worked through a vendor in another state, which uploaded the data.
“The vendor, working with Carolina and some of the other UNC campuses, just this week released a new version of their product that will enable our ITS [Information Technology Services] folks, with the proper training, to upload new campus directory data to that system from here on campus,” Mike McFarland ’82, director of University communications, said Friday. “That will be an improvement. … This is all not as simple as just pushing a few buttons.”
McFarland explained that at any given point it was impossible to know how many registrants had yet to be entered in to the system.
About three hours after the shooting on March 5, the police department issued its first news release. Then, about 10:20 a.m., a follow-up release was issued with more details about the victim and a more specific appeal to the community for help with information. For those who received any form of the alert, the lapse in time between the 5 a.m. shooting and the alert was attributed to the police department’s determination that no continuing threat existed.
The text message and e-mail alert provided a Web site address – alertcarolina.unc.edu – that students, faculty and staff could visit for more information. One also can use that Web site to register for the notification service.
Text messaging represents one of four ways the University now communicate using the Alert Carolina system. The system also incorporates wired phones on campus, campus e-mail and four new sirens. In many situations, messages would be conveyed using the first three components of the system; the sirens would be added in the event of a life-threatening emergency.
Using wired phones on the campus, the campus sends what’s called a “system broadcast” to all phones on the campus. No registration is needed for that service. But that system, which also is used for nonemergencies, has a glitch. It is sent as a voice mail message, and each individual phone will not display a light indicating a message is waiting unless it already has another message waiting.
“You do receive them,” said Patty Courtright ’75, director of internal communications. “The systemwide message goes out to everyone, but you don’t get a little light or indication on your phone that it is there. That has more to do with the technology of that system.”
The four sirens are located at various points on the campus and would be sounded only during a life-threatening emergency or a test. Scenarios for siren activation include an armed and dangerous person on or near campus, a major chemical spill or hazard or a tornado sighting.
Related coverage is available online:
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Text Message Alert Didn’t Reach Hundreds Due to Backlog
News report from March 2008 -
She Danced and Demanded: Eve Carson Is Remembered
News report from March 2008
