Spring Break
Text messaging alerts roll out
Mark Milian
Issue date: 5/1/07 Section: News
The university implemented a campus-wide text message alert system yesterday that will notify students and others associated with the university of emergencies, with plans to expand to regular crime alerts within months.
The program, called UMD Alert, had been planned for some time but was expedited in response to the Virginia Tech shootings. The alert system allows police and safety officials to send messages during crisis, such as a severe weather warning or a criminal threat, said University Police Spokeswoman Maj. Cathy Atwell.
Initially, the messages will be sent only "if there was a natural disaster or a threat to the campus that required us to notify the community immediately," Atwell said. "We're going to start small. We were just anxious to get the system up and running."
UMD Alert, which can be accessed online at www.alert.umd.edu, allows students, alumni, faculty, staff, parents and campus visitors to sign up for the free service, which offers optional traffic and weather alerts, in addition to emergency notifications. Other optional services like news alerts from CNN and Fox News may be added in the future. Students can also sign up for the system by texting the keyword "UMD" to the phone number 411911, and can opt out at any time by sending "UMD Stop" to the same number.
The alert system has the ability to contact and accept responses from nearly all mobile devices, including cell phones, pagers and PDAs. It can also send notifications to e-mail addresses registered with the system.
But because the service requires students to manually sign up, unlike the current method for delivering crime alerts, where the university listserv automatically includes all student addresses, it is unlikely to replace the current system, Atwell said.
Students who do not have text messaging on their phone plans will have to pay a fee of 10 to 15 cents per message, depending on the service provider.
The $64,000 agreement with Roam Secure Inc., a company providing similar text alert infrastructures in Washington and other cities, will be funded by the university without raising fees for students, said university spokesman Millree Williams.
The program, called UMD Alert, had been planned for some time but was expedited in response to the Virginia Tech shootings. The alert system allows police and safety officials to send messages during crisis, such as a severe weather warning or a criminal threat, said University Police Spokeswoman Maj. Cathy Atwell.
Initially, the messages will be sent only "if there was a natural disaster or a threat to the campus that required us to notify the community immediately," Atwell said. "We're going to start small. We were just anxious to get the system up and running."
UMD Alert, which can be accessed online at www.alert.umd.edu, allows students, alumni, faculty, staff, parents and campus visitors to sign up for the free service, which offers optional traffic and weather alerts, in addition to emergency notifications. Other optional services like news alerts from CNN and Fox News may be added in the future. Students can also sign up for the system by texting the keyword "UMD" to the phone number 411911, and can opt out at any time by sending "UMD Stop" to the same number.
The alert system has the ability to contact and accept responses from nearly all mobile devices, including cell phones, pagers and PDAs. It can also send notifications to e-mail addresses registered with the system.
But because the service requires students to manually sign up, unlike the current method for delivering crime alerts, where the university listserv automatically includes all student addresses, it is unlikely to replace the current system, Atwell said.
Students who do not have text messaging on their phone plans will have to pay a fee of 10 to 15 cents per message, depending on the service provider.
The $64,000 agreement with Roam Secure Inc., a company providing similar text alert infrastructures in Washington and other cities, will be funded by the university without raising fees for students, said university spokesman Millree Williams.
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Bruce Tennant
posted 5/02/07 @ 11:50 PM EST
This alert system certainly has it merits, however, I have two concerns. Cellphone coverage within buildings is often terrible, if it exists at all; I have Cingular and I cannot get a signal in McKeldin Library. (Continued…)
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