UMKC emergency alert system delayed

University officials urged students to sign up for alerts.

By Jewels Phraner

Published Feb. 22, 2008

In the wake of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and Northern Illinois University shootings, campuses across the nation are implementing emergency alert systems, including all four UM system campuses.

For many schools, the real test will be if the alert system fulfills its promises in the event of an emergency.

Earlier this February, the alert system did not work when UM-Kansas City sent out an alert to notify students of a snow day.

On Feb. 6, some students, faculty and staff members did not receive the text message or e-mail stating school had been cancelled until much too late, if they received it at all.

“It was a human error,” Information Technology Director Terry Robb said.

Robb said the fault lay with both UMKC and the National Notification Network, the national company also called 3n that the UM system has contracted with to provide the emergency alert system.

Robb said neither the 3n operator nor the UMKC caller specified a duration for the alert to be sent.

“It can take a long time to send an alert to an entire campus,” Robb said.

Because no one specified the duration for the alert to be sent, it defaulted to 30 minutes, which didn’t give the system enough time to notify everyone, Robb said.

After speaking to a 3n representative, Robb said he was told the company moved their call center back into the company’s headquarters in Glendale, Calif., in hopes of ensuring the operator would ask for the duration next time.

3n could not be reached for comment.

“It shouldn’t happen again,” Robb said.

For an alert to be sent to the entire MU campus, Robb said the alert process might take about four hours. Robb said one of the reasons for the delay is due to cell phone providers being unable to process that many requests at one time.

“That’s just an estimate,” he said. “We haven’t tested it campus-wide, yet, but we’re planning on it soon.”

The UM system is also having difficulty convincing students to sign up to receive the alerts, a problem also faced by schools with similar programs.

Robb said everyone with a UM system e-mail account or campus phone number is automatically signed up, but only a fraction of students, faculty and staff have signed up for the text message or cell phone call alert.

At MU, 4,382 students have signed up for a cell phone call, and 1,225 students have signed up for a text message alert. Although MU has the highest sign-up rates of any of the four campuses, the Division of Information Technology has advertised in The Maneater, sent mass e-mails and given away and an iPod to encourage students and staff to sign up.

In an e-mail sent Feb. 15 to MU students, Chancellor Brady Deaton also urged students to sign up.

“My colleague administrators and I consider the safety and welfare of all of you to be our very highest priority,” he said in the mass e-mail.

UM system President Gary Forsee sent a similar e-mail to all four campuses Tuesday to encourage students to sign up for the alert system.

“I hope and pray we never need to activate the alert system in response to events such as last week’s tragedy at Northern Illinois University,” he said in the e-mail. “But I am a believer in sensible preparedness. This preparedness includes building broad participation in our campus alert network. Alert systems are only as effective as our ability to make contact with you.”