Participation in emergency alert system growing, URI officials hope for more

By: Robert Preliasco

Posted: 12/4/07

12/04/07 - Approximately one quarter of the University of Rhode Island's total population has signed up for the university's EmergencyAlert system.

J. Vernon Wyman, URI's assistant vice president of business services, said that 4,263 students, faculty and staff have signed up for the notification system as of Sunday. There are about 18,000 students and employees at the university.

Members of the URI community have been able to sign up on e-Campus for the EmergencyAlert system for the last three weeks. The system is designed to send a text message, telephone call or e-mail to the phone number or e-mail address submitted by each person that registers for the service. URI officials can tailor the message to notify the community about class cancellations, snow days or more serious emergencies. Wyman said that it should be fully operational by the end of this week, ready to send messages to all who have signed up.

"The system is only effective if there's people on the other end of it who are going to receive the notices," he said.

For this reason, URI President Robert L. Carothers and the other university officials involved with the system have said that their goal is for 100 percent participation. Wyman said that the current numbers are good, but the numbers show that there is more work to be done to get the word out about the system.

"It's encouraging on the one hand and yet there's still quite a ways to go to get full participation," he said.

URI Communications Director Linda Acciardo said the average participation at other schools with similar networks is between 25 and 30 percent.

Wyman said that 3,656 of the people who have signed up so far are students. He said that this is in part because some faculty and staff have said that they did not realize that the system is intended for them as well. To counter this, all staff and faculty received a voicemail message today from Carothers explaining EmergencyAlert.

The system has already had a significant advertising campaign, which Acciardo said has cost $7,000 so far. The campaign involved posters, postcards, advertisements in the Cigar and informational booths in the Memorial Union and Hope Commons.

Acciardo said there will be a new campaign before the end of this semester that will include mailings to parents. Even though parents are not eligible to register for the alerts, URI officials hope that they will urge their children to sign up.

One thing that will not be seen is a test of the system.

"We don't want to diminish the value of communications that come through that tool," Wyman said. He said that he wants URI students and employees to receive messages only during an actual emergency, so that they don't ignore a serious message because they are used to receiving tests.

Wyman added that the first large-scale "test" of the system will be on the first day that classes are cancelled because of snow. He added that this event will also probably encourage more people to sign up after they see how convenient it would be to receive notification.

The EmergencyAlert has been tested on the small scale using the cell phone numbers of some of the administrators involved with the system. Wyman said that after the test message was delivered to MIR3, the firm that provides the technology behind the system, the phones of the people involved in the test received the message in a matter of seconds.

"We've seen the system and we understand it's a relatively simple system to use, but the capabilities of the system are quite remarkable," Wyman said.