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December 17, 2007, 09:03 AM ET
More on LSU's Malfunctioning Emergency-Notification System
Officials at Louisiana State University say they have now resolved the problem that caused an emergency-notification system to fail to send a campuswide warning to many students last week after a double murder at a campus apartment building.
It is still not clear how many people failed to receive the text messages at the time they were sent, or if any of the messages initially went through.
Doug Kaufman, chief executive of ClearTXT, said in an e-mail interview late Sunday that the problem occurred because of “a misunderstanding between LSU and ClearTXT about how enrollment data were to be collected from subscribers” via the campus’s Web-based sign-up system.
“We have worked together to clarify how enrollment data is to be collected and the situation has been resolved,” he added.
Martin Ringle, chief technology officer at Reed College, said in an interview on Friday that the incident emphasized the importance of testing new notification systems before trouble hits, though he noted that he does not know the details of the LSU incident.
At Reed, officials are installing and testing a service called Connect-ED, by the NTI Group.
“We’ve been testing as we go to make sure that we know who is being reached and to make sure that the people are fully trained in its use,” Mr. Ringle said. “So many people in higher education believe that when you throw technology at a problem, it’s going to be fixed,” he said. “And they fail to realize just how complex the use of a technology has become.”
In a statement issued on Saturday, LSU officials said that they plan a full-scale test of the system January 18, the week classes resume after the holiday break. —Jeffrey R. Young
Categories: Leadership, Security
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