Protecting Students: VA Tech after 4/16/07

A post by "Blake the Megalomaniac" To see more posts click here

Being the concerned citizen and proud alumnus that I am, I recently sent an email to the executives down at the company that is Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University to ascertain what changes were implemented to protect their students and faculty in the wake of all the school shootings.  I figured, since I hemorrhaged $60,000 directly into VT’s Wachovia account over a span of four years (1/6th of which I’m still paying off), that they owed me the decency of information.

Mr. Larry Hickner, Associate VP of University Relations felt obliged to field the sole question I posed: how has VaTech adapted their policies and procedures to the current volatile climate that is higher education. Citing a recent article from WAPO on the University of  Maryland’s new software to alert their students of an emergency.

Here is what Mr. Hickner wrote in reply:

“…We have the ability to send email to all campus addresses, post instantly to our website in several ways and locations, and use campus sirens, when needed.  Post April 16, the university added several emergency notification protocols including message boards in classrooms and an alert system that can send text, voice, and email messages.  The former is located in 174 highly utilized classrooms with plans to add 200-300 more signs in other spaces such as teaching labs and low usage classrooms.  The latter is a system service from a third party provider in which subscribers can request notification from up to three communication channels. We currently have 30,000+ subscribers. Most ask for two notification channels €“ about 75% ask for text and the balance request phone mail as first priority.  We currently are in process of developing a proprietary technology that would enable a type of IM pop-up message on any computer as long as it’s on the internet someplace.  All of these communications channels are accessed simultaneously from a proprietary system we call the Emergency Notification System (ENS).  Anyone who has ever had to send emergency messages over different systems will tell you that it can be cumbersome to send email, then phone mail, then text alerts, etc€¦. Ours allows simultaneous issuance….”

Nevermind how simple it is to purchase a gun in Virginia, schools need to move to the forefront of this issue.  They should begin to fully vet their student’s mental health and make sure that when things pop off, all students are informed and things get locked down.  Seems like VaTech is learning from their mistakes. True

udothedishes…