CLIPS: Bill urges colleges to use text-messaging alert system (04/19/07)

BY DANIEL VICTOR
Of The Patriot-News

Could the key to saving lives come 120 characters at a time on a tiny screen?

That tiny screen — that of a cell phone — is usually on hand for an estimated 90 percent of college students. E-mails might be quick, but the shootings at Virginia Tech showed they won’t be able to give vital information to students in classrooms or in cars on their way to campus.

You could try landlines and answering machines, but those are so 1998. College students are using them sparingly, having moved toward the constant connectedness of cell phones.

“This is everyday life to those individuals,” said Rep. Scott Conklin, D-Centre, who introduced a resolution yesterday urging colleges to implement text-messaging alert systems. “This is what they do.”

Conklin urges Pennsylvania schools to adopt alert systems similar to Penn State University’s.

The school’s public information office runs PSUTXT, which students opt into for updates on emergencies, school closings, sports scores and concert announcements. The service, launched in August 2006, sends short messages to students’ cell phone screens.

A renewed awareness effort, buoyed by the shootings at Virginia Tech, boosted subscribers from 4,055 Monday morning to 6,749 at noon yesterday, school spokeswoman Annemarie Mountz said. During a 10-minute phone conversation, 25 more people enrolled.

It is one of several tools used to reach the 43,000 students at State College, she said, “because there is no one good way to reach everybody.”

“In the past, we were thinking more along the lines of school closings because of snow,” Mountz said. “But we were always aware that in an emergency, we would have this available.”

The service is provided by E2Campus, which claims about 30 colleges as customers. The service can send out 18,000 text messages per minute, and students can get updates in four to eight seconds, company spokesman Bryan Crum.

“Students have their cell phones with them wherever they go,” Crum said. “There’s a really good chance everyone on campus is going to get that alert. Even if they don’t, the person next to them will see.”

A campus of 2,000 people would pay $3,000 per year for the service, he said. A school with 50,000 would pay $27,500.

Conklin’s resolution, if passed, would urge, but not require, schools to use Penn State’s system as a model. He said he’d like to see compulsory participation from students, but he couldn’t imagine students not wanting the information.

“When you’re a student, you’re mandated to give your Social Security number,” he said. “Why not have colleges and universities say, ‘We want to have your phone number and your text messaging and your e-mail as well’?”

Crum said none of the schools using E2Campus requires students to participate. Students opt in to the service because of spam and telemarketing laws, he said.

Elizabethtown College, with 1,900 students, uses voice mail, e-mail and its Web site to contact students in emergencies, school spokeswoman Mary Dolheimer said.

The idea of text messaging is “something that we have looked at extensively in the past and will continue to look at,” she said. She sent copies of recent articles about text messaging to the school’s emergency management group, she said.

“Students do not utilize their landline phones,” Dolheimer said. “They really stick to their cell phone, especially when they’re in transit. They’re not logged into computers, and they’re not sitting in front of a TV.”