UMD’s Tried and True Text Alerts
Shortly after the Virginia Tech mass shooting, the University of Maryland adopted a text message emergency alert system. Nearly three years after its deployment, Campus Safety checks in with the school to see how the technology has fared.
On April 16, 2007, the world of higher education safety and security changed forever. On that fateful day, a deranged 23-year-old Virginia Tech student shot and killed 32 people and wounded many more in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.
Immediately after the incident, the public questioned how Virginia Tech, as well as other U.S. colleges and universities, could do a better job of informing students, faculty and staff of imminent, life-threatening dangers, such as active shooters. Thus began the higher education community’s mad scramble for improved mass notification systems.
Like other institutions of higher learning, the University of Maryland, College Park soon adopted a text messaging emergency alert solution that can send messages to cell phones, PDAs, pagers and E-mail addresses. “I had been looking at text messaging systems for quite a while but couldn’t get the money to implement it,” says Maj. Jay Gruber, who is the commander of the technology services bureau for the campus’ department of public safety. “But shortly after Virginia Tech, our university president was very interested in getting text messaging for our campus.”
So interested in fact, that only two days after the tragedy, the school had its Cooper Notification Roam Secure Alert Network (RSAN) up and running, and registering subscribers. The procurement process took about four hours.
With such a fast turnaround time, one might wonder if there was a rush to judgment by the university. Gruber, however, was confident in the new system’s vendor and technology because he had done his homework. In the year prior to the Virginia Tech incident, he researched and vetted the mass notification solutions available on the market and selected Cooper Notification because he liked and trusted the company.
More importantly, since the solution’s deployment, it has proven its value by quickly and effectively delivering emergency messages to students, faculty and staff. The main hurdles that had to be overcome were some of the policies supporting the system.
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About the Author
Robin Hattersley, Editor-in-Chief
Robin has been covering the security and campus law enforcement industries since 1998 and is a specialist in school, university and hospital security, public safety and emergency management, as well as emerging technologies and systems integration. She joined CS in 2005 and has authored award-winning editorial on campus law enforcement and security funding, officer recruitment and retention, access control, IP video, network integration, event management, crime trends, the Clery Act, Title IX compliance, sexual assault, dating abuse, emergency communications, incident management software and more. Robin has been featured on national and local media outlets and was formerly associate editor for the trade publication Security Sales & Integration. She obtained her undergraduate degree in history from California State University, Long Beach.
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