College Of Charleston Changing Emergency Procedures?
posted 5:25 pm Mon September 24, 2007 - Charleston
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The possible changes come in light of Fridays' incident regarding a suspicious package found near campus.
It's a question facing every university and college in the What is the fastest and most efficient way to alert students during an emergency? On Friday, the school sent out e-mails to students and faculty less then twenty minutes after police found a suspicious package.
But many still had no idea what was happening.
We spoke with the Executive Vice President of Student Affairs Victor Wilson about the incident, “the complaint we are getting from students is they didn't get the e-mail or I left at eight in the morning and wasn't in front of the computer.”
Wilson says the school is close to buying a notification system to fix the problem.
This would allow the school to alert students by e-mail and by cell phone through text messaging.
Wilson says it's a costly measure but worth it in this post Virginia Tech era.
“It's a cost we will take care of it's too important in this day an age students as a majority have cell phones with text messaging capabilities so we will reach a majority,” Wilson said.
The school faced another dilemma during the crisis.
The affairs office was flooded with calls from parents.
Wilson says he understands the concern from parents but his priority is the students.
“I'm trying to make sure students are safe, but I had a mother call crying and I didn't want to hang-up on her but I couldn't give her the 30 minutes she wanted during a crisis,” Wilson said.
Some students say they don't have text messaging on their phone or simply don't own a cell phone.
In that case, Wilson says students will have to make the effort to check their e-mails for updates during an emergency situation.
Wilson says there will be no additional charge to students for the notification system.
The school is also considering whether or not to make it mandatory for students to sign up for the alerts.
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