It took nearly an hour after the fatal shootings at the University of Alabama at Huntsville on Friday for administrators to send an alert via the emergency-notification system. Some people on the campus say word should have been sent much sooner.
On Monday the university's president, David B. Williams, sent an e-mail message to students and staff, and faculty members saying that administrators would examine the emergency response and consider improvements. "Some of you are understandably troubled about the speed with which a text message alert was sent following the shootings," said the message. "How to more effectively use the university's text message system in the midst of a fast-moving, life-threatening situation will certainly be part of that review."
Ray Garner, a university spokesman, said in an interview with The Chronicle that the system had been used many times for weather alerts since it was set up "some time ago," but that he did not know why it had not been used more quickly in this case. "I don't know if there was some technical snag," he said. "We haven't analyzed that yet."
University officials quickly dealt with the emergency, Mr. Garner emphasized. "Our campus police responded in a very quick time frame," he said. "They had the suspect apprehended within minutes of the 911 call, and it was contained to one building, so there was no threat to the rest of campus."
Comments
1. 22097237 - February 17, 2010 at 09:27 am
Hopefully such a tragic and rare event will never occur on my campus. However, I'm curious to know how fast the readership expects emergency response alerts to go out? An hour is uniformly castigated by the press. Is 20 minutes from the first 911 call too long? Or, are we getting to the point where the dispatcher might be expected to compose and push out a message within 5 minutes of any reported safety-related call, even if the 911 call is unconfirmed and no safety personnel are on site yet? What would the press and public forgive and accept after the fact?
2. justme2010 - February 17, 2010 at 01:38 pm
This is silly. Since VA Tech we look at warning systems as some sort of panacea that will keep us safe and "nothing will harm us now." If police are too quick w/ the warning they will be roasted for unnecessary alarming everyone. If they wait until they have the facts, they are too slow.
"They had the suspect apprehended within minutes of the 911 call, and it was contained to one building, so there was no threat to the rest of campus."
I believe that answers the question, this is a non-issue.
3. mavalos - February 17, 2010 at 01:39 pm
It depends on what kind of emergency system alert the campus has. We have a system that is multifacited. The system is tied to e-mail or on an optional bases it can be tied to a cell phone should students, staff and faculty prefer to be notified in this way. All of our classrooms are equiped with a voice monitoring system by which campus police can send out a warning to lock classrooms doors should an active shooter be engaged. Not all campuses have such systems.
However once the arrest was made something should probably have gone out to the campus perhaps not going into detail of the incident but to inform everyone that they were in no danger. If the arrest was made as quickly as it was it does seem that an hour was a tad too long to notify people.
4. uah_alum - February 17, 2010 at 03:17 pm
Could this publication please use the correct name for the university involved? The correct name is "The University of Alabama in Huntsville" not ... "at Huntsville". Yes, the branch in Birmingham is Univ of Alabama "at Birmingham" but that does not apply for Huntsville. Oh, You can ignore the pretentious capitalized "The" in the name. :) -- sincerely, UAH Alum
5. justme2010 - February 17, 2010 at 05:03 pm
Do police send out some mass notification message everytime a shooting or robbery occurs in their jurisdictions? Nope. Only in academia we have become addicted to this urge that "we have to know everything" or else. Do we don't. As a police manager, my last concern is whether we send a message out telling everyone they can stop holding their breath. We are doing a 1,000 things after such an incident. Notifying the campus to relax is around 499 on my list. If the shooter was on the run, then we will tell you.
6. tayloruah - February 18, 2010 at 11:18 am
This is not the topic of conversation on campus as I have heard it at UAH. They sent an e-mail to all faculty and staff about the shooting and the possibility of a shooter on campus 5-10 minutes after the shooting happened and they had the dorms on lockdown 10 minutes after it happened. That's pretty good if you ask me (not even mentioning that the police responded to the actual shooting location within about 2 minutes). That probably would not have happened a few years ago so I am not going to complain too much about not receiving some cryptic phone text about a shooting on campus. They moved fast to take care of everyone in immediate danger beyond those in that conference room. I am also an alum of Virginia Tech and I remember the ridiculous prodding of the media to "blame someone" for the deficiencies of communication there. Aside from a few people, the VT community largely united against such a position of blame and came together behind the President and police department. Again, people here at UAH (as I have heard conversations) are not griping about notification right now and they are the ones with the right to say whether this is or is not pertinent to the tragedy down here.