Students can rest easier now that a new emergency text messaging system is up and running at Cal Poly.
The Cal Poly Emergency Notification System is a service that allows the University Police Department to send text messages to students, faculty and staff in the event of an emergency posing an imminent physical threat to the campus community.
“If there was an earthquake or a shooting, then we could get information to people right away and let them know what to do,” said Vicki Stover, associate vice president of Administration.
The university began testing the system, provided by the notification company e2campus, during the last two weeks of fall quarter in 2007. It became available to people still on campus at the end of the quarter.
The service is an opt-in system that students, faculty and staff can sign up for through the Cal Poly portal at my.calpoly.edu. As of Tuesday, 938 people had signed up for the system.
“We’re constantly looking at what we need to do with emergency communication,” Stover said. “One of the areas we saw we could improve on was this system.”
The recent Virginia Tech shooting prompted the university to look into this service, which is used by several other universities across the United States, she said.
An announcement will be placed on the homepage of the Cal Poly portal at the beginning of each quarter to allow students to sign up for the system. The link is available through the personal information tab at all times.
The service allows the University Police Department to send alerts to students via SMS text messaging, RSS, PDA, e-mail, pager and Google, AOL or My Yahoo Web pages.
“Some people don’t use texting,” Stover said. “So we’re going to use multiple ways of notifying people.”
All that is needed to sign up is a cell phone number; the subscriber can add e-mail addresses, RSS feeds or additional Web pages after the account is created. The service is free to subscribers although some individual cell-carriers may charge messaging rates.
“I think it’s a great idea,” general engineering freshman Brian Kane said. “It provides peace of mind for students.”
Subscribers can join two separate groups: on-campus residents or off-campus students, faculty and staff. This allows police to send messages exclusively to on-campus students, off-campus subscribers or every subscriber depending on the type of emergency.
Subscribers are able to pick opt-out dates on April 8, June 30 or Sept. 29, which allows them to stop receiving messages when they are no longer in the area.
The password-protected system cost $9,500 for a one-year contract with Cal Poly. The administration will reevaluate the program at the end of the year to determine if they want to resubscribe.
“I think it adds another layer of communication for us and communication is key during an emergency,” Stover said.
The university will test the system on the second Wednesday of every month to make sure it is working, but otherwise, the system will only be used for emergencies. No advertising or non-emergency messages will be sent, Stover said.
Cal Poly also uses its homepage www.calpoly.edu and radio channel 1610 AM for emergency notification.