Harvard To Text Message Alerts

Harvard launched a campus-wide text message alert system last month for students, faculty, and staff that enables administrators to send messages to participants’ cell phones in case of emergency.

The use of these alert systems on university campuses has expanded dramatically since the Virginia Tech shooting last spring. Administrators there received criticism for not immediately informing students and employees when the shooting began.

Harvard affiliates can join the alert system by registering online with their ID number and cell phone number through the Web site www.messageme.harvard.edu.

“It’s redundant,” said University spokesman Joseph Wrinn of the alert system, “but we’re trying to keep up with what you guys are paying attention to.”

The biggest hurdle in making the system effective could still lie ahead, according to Bryan Crum, a spokesman for Omnilert—the company providing Harvard’s alert system.

“Schools will get this text messaging system and put it on their Web site and think just everyone is going to sign up, when schools should just do a better job promoting the service,” Crum said.

University officials said that the decision about how to publicize the system will be left largely to Harvard’s individual schools.

“Each school will follow whatever notification process they determined fits best into their particular constituencies,” Wrinn wrote in an e-mail statement. “Centrally we’ve distributed postcards to the Schools to be put in mailboxes waiting for incoming students.”

Crum recommended taking a “multi-modal approach” to spreading the word by using e-mails, postcards, fliers, laptops for sign-up, and a graphic on the university Web site.

Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesman Robert Mitchell said that the Dean of the College and the Dean of the Faculty are planning to send messages informing members of the FAS community about the system, and that a link will be placed on the FAS Web site later this week.

“The College will have a meeting very soon to talk about additional ways to reach students,” he added.

Participation in the service is currently voluntary. But according to Susan Walsh—the executive director for information technology infrastructure—individual academic units may decide to require participation at a later date.

“I think there is potential within schools to make this no longer opt-in, but mandatory, but that would be more of a school decision,” she said.

Nancy Kinchla—the director of telecommunications services at University Information Systems—said the alert system became active in the third week of August and had approximately 3,800 subscribers as of last Friday.

Harvard’s settings for the system require subscribers to re-register at the beginning of each academic year in order to remain in the system, a feature administrators say they chose in order to maintain a clean database.

“It really was thought to be the best that we refresh it every year,” Kinchla said.

Some students have expressed concerns about divulging their cell phone number and receiving excessive text messages from the school, but Kinchla said the system would only be used in emergencies.

According to Wrinn, any use of the text message system would involve members of the Crisis Management Team, which is chaired by the Provost and is at the highest level in Harvard’s management structure.

“This would be a very senior decision,” said Wrinn.

Crum said that universities employing Omnilert’s system had activated the system for a wide variety of emergencies—running the gamut from chemical spills and severe weather to a loose pit bull, which stalked the campus of Florida A&M.

“Sign ups [at Florida A&M] increased after that,” Crum noted.

—Staff writer Clifford M. Marks can be reached at cmarks@fas.harvard.edu.