Inconsistent alerts keep everyone up all night

In a world filled with stabbings, shootings and bombings, awareness has never been more important. Knowing what is going on around us is a necessity. This is why UH has an emergency alert system.

This alert system is designed to reach students through email and cellphone. This system is also used to notify students of school closures and bad weather conditions.

While some students get notifications in real time, others may not get them until hours after. If there is a robbery or assault on campus, emails have been known to arrive up to three hours after the incident. When assaults and robberies occur, I would like to be notified immediately.

This is no reflection on the work of the UH Department of Public Saftey; however, when the University is faced with reports of a serious incident in progress — like a possible gunman — the UH Alert System has been seen to react more quickly than with other cases.

On March 5, students were alerted that there was a sighting of a possibly armed “Asian mail” around Philip G. Hoffman Hall. Students received text messages and emails advising them to stay indoors. Less than an hour later, students were notified that everything was “all clear.” The suspect was merely carrying a hand-held scanner; but it was comforting to receive a prompt text message to let me know it was safe.

The system is not the problem. It works, but high traffic crashes the alert system website. Immediate information is not impossible; it just seems to take a high priority incident to get this information quickly.

Many factors go into the relaying of this information, which may be why it takes longer than some would like. David Johnson, executive director of Technology Services and Support, said the system operates as a chain of events.

The process begins with an incident being reported to UHDPS. From there, the message is entered into the interface of an emergency notification system called Pier. The computer then decides whether this notification should be sent out over email, text or both. The alert is then sent to the server to be compiled and then the information is sent to a pre-generated list of email addresses and cell phone numbers. If the option to send it to a cell phone is chosen, the alert must then go through each student’s specific cell phone provider company before it is received by the student.

Factors such as students being out of range of a cell phone tower, having their phone off or having the wrong phone number in the UH system can increase in the amount of time it takes to receive a message.

“We would like our students to receive the message within five minutes,” Johnson said. “We know that that’s not always going to happen because there are a lot of factors that go into it. We usually try to say five to seven minutes.”

In a world dependent on technology and speed, Johnson and the UHDPS are constantly looking for ways to improve the system.

“You can’t just depend on one message system,” Johnson said. “We are looking to integrate into our digital cyber system. We just signed a campus-wide agreement for digital signage.”

Digital signage is information kiosks and slideshows that would be displayed on screens when students walk into a building. Pictures of students and information about upcoming events would be seen. When there is an incident occurring, the alert would override the system, and the message would be displayed directly on the screen.

Starting in the fall, students will receive emails, text messages and be able to see alerts on the screens in buildings. This system would notify students of bad weather conditions and dangers on campus.

This system sounds like a step forward. There is the concern of what level of alarm students would want to be notified. While some students may become annoyed with possible false alarms, others, like creative writing sophomore Nicolas Montoya, would rather be notified too often than not enough.

“Being notified not enough would mean that we are being ignorant to what is happening around us, and we would have a false sense of security,” Montoya said. “I would rather be on the cautious side.”

The steps that the UH Alert System is taking to ensure that students are aware of what is happening around them are a step in the right direction to get information out quicker. The longer it takes to receive an alert, the better the chance that someone else could be walking in to danger. Situations should be treated like a high profile case until proven otherwise.

Kelly Schafler is a print journalism sophomore and may be reached at [email protected].