Text messaging alerts roll out

The university implemented a campus-wide text message alert system yesterday that will notify students and others associated with the university of emergencies, with plans to expand to regular crime alerts within months.

The program, called UMD Alert, had been planned for some time but was expedited in response to the Virginia Tech shootings. The alert system allows police and safety officials to send messages during crisis, such as a severe weather warning or a criminal threat, said University Police Spokeswoman Maj. Cathy Atwell.

Initially, the messages will be sent only "if there was a natural disaster or a threat to the campus that required us to notify the community immediately," Atwell said. "We're going to start small. We were just anxious to get the system up and running."

UMD Alert, which can be accessed online at www.alert.umd.edu, allows students, alumni, faculty, staff, parents and campus visitors to sign up for the free service, which offers optional traffic and weather alerts, in addition to emergency notifications. Other optional services like news alerts from CNN and Fox News may be added in the future. Students can also sign up for the system by texting the keyword "UMD" to the phone number 411911, and can opt out at any time by sending "UMD Stop" to the same number.

The alert system has the ability to contact and accept responses from nearly all mobile devices, including cell phones, pagers and PDAs. It can also send notifications to e-mail addresses registered with the system.

But because the service requires students to manually sign up, unlike the current method for delivering crime alerts, where the university listserv automatically includes all student addresses, it is unlikely to replace the current system, Atwell said.

Students who do not have text messaging on their phone plans will have to pay a fee of 10 to 15 cents per message, depending on the service provider.

The $64,000 agreement with Roam Secure Inc., a company providing similar text alert infrastructures in Washington and other cities, will be funded by the university without raising fees for students, said university spokesman Millree Williams.

"It will not be integrated into any tuition fees," Williams said. "The university is making this investment because this is a worthwhile, important program."

In interviews, students said the alert system is a step toward easing the anxiety felt by some following the Virginia Tech shootings.

Maj. Jay Gruber, a spokesman for the Technology Services Bureau of the University Police, said students without text messaging plans included in their cell phone contract will incur a fee - Verizon Wireless and AT&T charge 15 cents and 10 cents per message, respectively.

And the frequency of the alerts could ramp up considerably as early as the fall semester, when the university plans to begin sending messages for individual crime alerts, Gruber said.

"We do want to send out a brief text message, summarizing the crime," said Gruber, who estimated that the alerts could be delivered "within a couple hours of the event," instead of days. He said alerts will also be sent out when the emergency alarm is tested on the first Wednesday of the month.

Some students say they are concerned the university may begin sending too many unnecessary messages, turning nickel and dime charges into a financial burden.

"If it's a separate message for every crime alert, 10 cents a message or whatever could really add up," said sophomore history major Dalton Patterson.

UMD Alert does not yet have a plan for automatically removing students who graduate or transfer schools. But Gruber said students will be reminded to manually remove themselves from the directory.

Despite the possible costs, University Public Safety officials said the ability to reach students by phone, a device many carry with them nearly all the time, is crucial in providing people on the campus with immediate safety alerts, which can include detailed advice for avoiding danger - something the campus siren cannot do.

"With the siren, all you know is that something happened and that they want you to go inside," Atwell said. "The text messages allow us to give more specific details as to the nature of an event."

Contact reporter Mark Milian at newsdesk@dbk.umd.edu.