Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
Special Supplement: Securing the Campus
A Multi-Pronged Plan
7/1/2007
Gollotti notes that since the Virginia Tech shootings in April, “It’s business as usual, but at a heightened level.” The tragedy, he says, has prompted the university to revisit the things it has already put into place: Currently, the public safety VP is looking at placing panic alarm systems in classrooms and other locations around the campus. To date, they’ve been installed only in offices.
Yet, he asserts, “technology isn’t the be-all. It’s still communication that’s most important.” Gollotti wants to continue opening up the lines of communication among students and administrators. But he also foresees a potential crackdown stemming from the Virginia Tech killings: more background checks on students, even before they matriculate.
Loud and Clear: BRINGING BACK SIRENS
There’s no mistaking the onset of an emergency at The University of Texas at Austin; you’ll hear about it, loud and clear. That’s because Campus Safety and Security has installed an outdoor warning system at four different locations across the main campus. If there’s an emergency that makes it unsafe to be outdoors—severe weather, an environmental hazard, an armed intruder—the sirens go off. (They also go off for a full minute at about 11:50 on the first Wednesday morning of every month, but those warnings are just tests). Upon hearing the sirens, campus community members know they are to take shelter immediately, move away from exterior windows, and quickly move to the lowest level of a building.
Sure, the sirens are low-tech, but they’re direct, they augment more typical safety measures like lockdowns and cell phone communication, and most importantly, they work—and they work fast. “The installation of an outdoor warning system is all about readiness,” says David Cronk, director of emergency preparedness for the university. Administrators at UT-Austin hope they will never need to use the warning system, but if they do, the sirens stand ready to blare. (Hear an audio clip of the sirens.)
LISTENING IN
Campus administrators today know that the widespread use of cell phones on campus has its advantages—and its drawbacks. One of those drawbacks is that, for institutions still relying on PBX-based telecommunications, student use of landline phones is way, way down. Many schools have been losing revenue for long-distance calls for some time now, not to mention having to maintain a conventional PBX setup to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. But another cell phone drawback has everything to do with protecting the physical security of the campus community, and the “digital divide” that administrators are faced with as they try to alert the community to emergency conditions: College and university administrators may be able to push messages out via e-mail, but students, in particular, don’t always check their e-mail boxes frequently. Today, students are much more connected to their cell phones, both for voice and text messaging. Recently, in fact, administrators at one institution alerted students via e-mail that classes would be suspended due to heavy snowstorm conditions, but nearly all of the commuters (about 40 percent of the total student population) showed up anyway, because they only checked e-mail sporadically.
Recommended Reading
- Get Users on Board
- Greening IT
- It's a Zinch
- Meeting up Virtually
- Online Tutorials to the Rescue
Now's the time to use online tutorials to streamline professional development and help desk management.
- Retention Rx
