OU Tries Out New Emergency System, Students Have Mixed Reactions

Students who signed up to receive emergency announcements or warnings on OU’s website will now receive a text, call and email from the OU Police Department.

The new system was implemented at the beginning of fall quarter in 2011. The university’s old system dated back to 2007, and the Office of Risk Management and Safety decided it needed an update.

The system currently used is called Blackboard Connect. Jill Harris, the Emergency Programs Manager, said, “Blackboard Connect gives us more capabilities for notification. We can send a text message, an email, and a phone call from the new system.”

The new system also allows university employees, faculty and staff to be contacted in case of an emergency.

Many students were dissatisfied with the old system after the tornado that hit Athens in 2010. Jamie Zipfel, a senior and peer mentor at OU, was in the middle of conducting an event for her mentees when they heard the tornado sirens going off. She didn’t receive the text message notification until she was walking home afterward. She said she had no idea how to handle it. “We’re on the third floor of a building, and we hear the sirens. So what do I do? Do I send students home?” She said it was difficult to know what was going on.

The old system was replaced due partially to the ineffectiveness of the old system.

“Last year we had not switched to the new system when the tornado event occurred,” Harris explained.

Though most agree that the new system is timelier, some were put off by the number of times they were contacted.

Zipfel thought the notices were a bit excessive. “I got three text messages and three emails, each of which said the same thing. And there was never any new information,” she said.

Michael Conley, a senior studying psychology at OU, disagreed. “I think the new notification system is a great improvement from the prior one. Any inconvenience or annoyance that these messages caused is a small price to pay, and fortunately this system is much more reliable than the last,” he said.

In addition, Harris said the university soon plans to add other ways in which students will be alerted in case of a crisis. “We will be implementing social media outlets, which we will be able to update using the new system,” Harris said. Currently, the office uses the OU Facebook page to notify students, but is looking to add more channels of communication.

Harris believes the students find the new system helpful.

“We tested it a couple of times, then we used it last Thursday, and I think that it’s been very effective,” she said.