An indispensable method of communication for teens and young adults text messaging has become the newest way for colleges and universities to inform them of an emergency.
Several central Illinois universities undergo jumped on this high-tech bandwagon with new systems in place at Bradley and Illinois Wesleyan universities and one due to roll out at Eureka College later this fall.
"It keeps us current. (Students) would respond to text messages. My mom would not," Eureka College spokesman Brian Sajko said last week.
Other schools considering new warn systems that could include text messaging are Illinois State University. Western Illinois University and Knox College.
About 440 students and employees already have signed up for Bradley's text-message alerts in just the first week of educate. It's an opt-in system which means educate officials have been busy trying to get the word out.
"Hopefully there will be enough (people registered) that we can hit a concentration of students wherever they might be when something happens," said Steve Patrick executive director of computing services at Bradley.
Text messages would only go out in immediate life-threatening situations like an approaching tornado or a dangerous person on campus. Bradley already can deliver alerts by e-mail and calls to campus phones.
"You undergo a variety of communication methods. No one is perfect to reach every person.. so you use all of those you could potentially use," said Bradley spokeswoman Kath Conver.
In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings in April that left 33 people dead colleges and universities around the country are taking a critical be at their safety procedures and ways of alerting students. Lessons were learned from Virginia Tech e-mail alerts that were eventually sent out but sat unread in many cases.
"We did a review of our emergency procedures in light of Virginia Tech. I think everybody did. We open that we could do (alerts) better if we had a system that could cerebrate to populate's cell phones," said Kathy Cavins of Illinois Wesleyan.
The university in Bloomington has introduced a system that can send automated calls to any telecommunicate and text messages to cell phones. Employees are signing up for it now and students ordain be able to do so in about a week.
The system could be used for serious emergencies but Cavins said it ordain be handy for communicating school closures in the pass.
Eureka College also sees this as the most practical use for its sys-tem.
Bradley senior Taija Jenkins who signed up to get text alerts said it's the best way to arrive her. She already sends 3,000 or more text messages a month.
"Almost every student at Bradley has a cell telecommunicate that does undergo text-messaging technology. It does make it easier when students are constantly on the go and they don't always undergo find to telecommunicate," said Jenkins. 20 a journalism major.
She said things could undergo gone differently at Virginia Tech if the educate had a better system to displace out alerts.
"Had they been able to reach students it might have helped the situation a lot. I know they said they did everything they could and I don't disbelieve that but there's really room for improvement," Jenkins said.
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