Informing Campus of Emergency: Philadelphia-Area Colleges Are Reviewing – and, in Some Cases, Changing – Their Procedures

By Kathy Boccella and Dan Hardy, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Apr. 19–Like many colleges that are prepared for the worst, Villanova University uses voice mail, e-mail and its Web site to quickly warn students if there is an emergency, from heavy snowfall to traffic snarls.

But on Dec. 6, when a gunman shot at police near the 254-acre campus in the early morning, it took more than four hours for the school to send out its first electronic alert.

“We could have done a better job of communicating. We needed to do it quicker,” said Ken Valosky, vice president of administration. Villanova is looking into a cell-phone text-messaging system to warn students of problems.

As questions arise over a fateful two-hour delay in alerting students during the Virginia Tech rampage, area colleges say they are reviewing their communication procedures to make sure they are up to speed, and some are making changes. Just this week, Rosemont College decided that the campus church bells would sound an emergency warning.

Most schools rely on several layers of notification, from the most advanced technologies like text messaging to old-fashioned bullhorns. The newest systems allow a single message to go out via phone, e-mail and text simultaneously.

Finding the right strategy is key, security experts say.

“E-mail to college kids is like snail mail,” said Paul Langhorst, vice president of SchoolReach in St. Louis, which provides communication networks to schools. “They’re used to IMs, text messaging, FaceBook and all that.”

Ashley Gartland, 19, a student at Widener University, agreed. “I keep my phone on vibrate even in class. I would get a message any time of day,” she said.

But schools that already use text alerts say students don’t always bother to subscribe. At La Salle University, fewer than 100 of the 6,000 students use the phone system. Now the college is thinking of requiring students to sign up. At Pennsylvania State University, only about 4,000 out of a campus of 42,000 signed up to receive cell-phone messages.

St. Joseph’s University was looking into a cell-phone warning system before the shooting but now is also considering such low-tech strategies as church bells and a World War II-type siren.

“We’re looking for some way to efficiently and effectively blanket the student population,” said Harriet Goodheart, a school vice president.

Drexel University is testing a new version of its DragonForce, a GPS handheld device that enables safety patrols to text and relay pictures to each other. In the fall, anyone on campus with a cell phone will be able to communicate with the officers.

Drexel recently issued a public-safety alert via e-mail, flyers and video screens throughout the campus after three students were attacked off campus.

Getting the message out in as many ways as possible is the best approach, said Glenn Rosenberg, vice president of higher education for AlliedBarton Security Services in King of Prussia.

But reaching everyone at a college can be a challenge, especially on large, spread-out campuses with thousands of students. Some students at Widener, which sits on 100 acres in Chester, said they wouldn’t know what to do in an emergency.

After the Virginia Tech shootings, Sarah Schaffer, 19, said: “I thought, ‘What would we do here?’ and I just didn’t know.”

In the past, the school has posted emergency information on its Web site, e-mail, or leaflets stuck to bulletin boards. But Josh Sorsby, 18, from Waldorf, Md., had another idea: ringing the bell in the Old Main administration building.

“Everybody would hear that,” he said.

It’s not that far-fetched. After the Virginia shooting, Rosemont, a suburban Catholic school with 400 undergraduates, decided to use the bells in Immaculate Conception Chapel in case of an emergency. The signal will be five rings, a pause, and five more rings.

“We’re small enough, with 56 acres and 16 buildings, that everybody will be able to hear the bells and know that there is a risk,” spokeswoman Alexis Kropp said.

Not necessarily, said Sarah Mannix, 21, a sophomore from Springfield, Delaware County. “We don’t really hear the church bells anymore,” she said. “We blank them out.”

Haverford College is awaiting an electronic alert system as well as a siren that will be installed on a rooftop.

“Some students check e-mails, and some don’t,” said Tom King, director of safety and security on the 216-acre campus.

He proposed the warnings systems after the school discussed how it would respond to a shooting on campus, and realized the biggest problem was communication.

“I thought I’d have to do a hard sell,” he said. “But they said we can’t afford not to have it.”

Bucks County Community College in Newtown has a “shelter in place” system that directs students to the nearest shelter when they hear emergency messages delivered by air horns, whistles, or announcements over portable loudspeaker. Students are told about the system during orientation and by letter each semester.

Sometimes the simplest plans work best, said Mike Sepanic, a spokesman for Rutgers University’s Camden campus.

While it is investigating putting in text- and voice-messaging systems, Rutgers-Camden also relies on its security force to spread emergency messages. The school also uses e-mail, a Web site and voice mail, but does not have a public-address system.

There are nine buildings on campus, and each one has a security guard stationed in it all the time, Sepanic said. A phone call is often the best way of spreading an emergency message.

“It just becomes a matter of letting them know what is going on,” he said. “It’s old-fashioned, but it works.”

Contact staff writer Kathy Boccella at kboccella@phillynews.com or 610-313-8123.

Inquirer staff writer Jeff Gammage contributed to this article.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Philadelphia Inquirer

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