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Virginia Tech shooting sparks NIC alert system

Crime

Virginia Tech shooting sparks NIC alert system

This summer, the college installed the e2Campus Emergency Alert System in an effort to improve campus security. The system, dubbed NICAlerts by NIC officials, allows college leadership to instantly inform faculty, staff and students of campus emergencies via email and text messaging.

The NICAlerts registration and service are free, and the system will only be used in the event of an emergency closure or evacuation of the campus. Routine campus announcements will continue to be delivered through the usual channels. Registration is voluntary, and NIC is encouraging its students to sign up.

According to Eric Murray, vice president of Student Services, the administration has wanted to install an emergency notification system for more than two years, but was unable to purchase one due to the high cost.

“Ever since the year the Virginia Tech shooting took place, we have wanted to do something like this,” Murray said.

After expressing an interest in an emergency notification system, NIC officials were invited to see a demonstration of e2Campus at Eastern Washington University.

“We had heard that Eastern had a new text messaging system, and we wanted to take a look at it,” said Rolly Jurgens, vice president of Administrative Services. “They spoke very highly of it and said it was easy to use. When we left, several of us talked about it and said this is something we need to do.”

September 11th proved that telephone and internet communications cannot be expected to cope with the amount of traffic that a crisis may generate. For days after the attack, many lines of communication remained jammed. Communications experts quickly realized that even with phone services unable to process the sheer number of calls, text messages, with their relatively small amount of data, could usually slip through the mess.

Omnilert, the communications company that designed and operates e2Campus, took the lessons of 9/11 to heart and developed an emergency notification system that integrated internet and text messaging. The Omnilert system is used by, among others, the U.S. Army and Newsrocket. e2Campus, which was developed by Omnilert specifically for colleges, provides for nearly 500 campuses across America.

Almost one third of the 6,000 U.S. Colleges use emergency notification systems. e2Campus, with its 500 customers, has distinguished itself as the leading emergency notification system on the market. It is completely web-based.

I am the current News Editor of The Sentinel, and in charge of creating the News section of this paper and assigning the stories covered in it.

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