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Kacey Beddoes
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CHRIS DETTRO and Sarah Antonacci
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2008-02-26
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By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
Published Friday, February 15, 2008
Springfield-area colleges have systems in place to alert students to campus emergencies, and most procedures have been updated or were instituted originally in the wake of campus shootings at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Va., last spring.
Thursday's shootings at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb brought the importance of those procedures to the forefront again.
"It's just awful," said Mike Underwood, spokesman for MacMurray College in Jacksonville. "Something like that really hits home."
The University of Illinois at Springfield, Illinois College in Jacksonville and Blackburn College in Carlinville all have some type of emergency notification system where students can receive e-mails, cell phone messages or other electronic notification should there be an emergency on campus.
Michelle Green, spokeswoman for UIS, said the school had a call from one parent within an hour of the NIU shooting expressing concern.
UIS sent out a campuswide message to faculty, staff and students late Thursday afternoon urging them to sign up for the UIS Emergency Notification System it implemented last month.
The university's chancellor or provost, chief of police or someone assigned the task sets the notification system in motion, Green said.
Lincoln Land Community College recently updated its emergency procedures in response to the Virginia Tech incident, said spokeswoman Lynn Whalen.
In addition to having armed campus police on duty 24 hours a day, LLCC has installed emergency phones in each classroom and has enabled all classroom doors to be locked from the inside.
"We also have a good counseling and referral system should anyone need that kind of help," Whalen said.
Jim Murphy, Illinois College spokesman, said more than 400 of IC's 1,000 students signed up to receive e-mail or text-message alerts last fall.
"It was a response to Virginia Tech and established a way to get information to students, faculty and staff as soon as possible," he said.
Blackburn College has an on-campus siren and a system to notify people via e-mail and on the college's Web site.
"When something like this happens, we always review the manual," said Rusty Ingram, public relations director at Blackburn. "We have security procedures we go through, and we can lock down the entrances to campus."
Ingram said the shootings at Virginia Tech "made us more aware," although he believes that because almost all Blackburn students have jobs on campus, they may be more aware.
"Our thoughts and prayers certainly go out to the people at Northern today," he said. "We have a chapel on campus if students here want to talk about it."
Staff writer Sarah Antonacci contributed to this report. Chris Dettro can be reached at 788-1510.
On the Web
For more information on the UIS Emergency Notification System, students can go to
<a href="https://emergency.uis.edu">https://emergency.uis.edu</a>
A previous version of the story misstated the number of students who have signed up for Illinois College's emergency alert system. The correct number is 400.
Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Generic</a>
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Original Source:
<a href="http://www.sj-r.com/News/stories/25291.asp">http://www.sj-r.com/News/stories/25291.asp</a>
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eng
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Generic
Title
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Area colleges updated alert systems after Virginia Tech
e-mail
niu
northern illinois university
police
siren
text messages
updated alert systems
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Contributor
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Kacey Beddoes
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Doug Finke
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2008-02-26
Description
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Doug Finke
GateHouse News Service
Fri Feb 15, 2008, 09:31 PM EST
SPRINGFIELD, IL - Northern Illinois University's response to Thursday's shooting rampage may have been helped by what state officials learned from last year's massacre at Virginia Tech University.
A Campus Safety Task Force was created to see what could be learned from the Virginia Tech incident and how those lessons could be implemented here.
Representatives from state colleges and universities, including NIU, attended task force meetings. One of the most important lessons discussed was getting information to students as quickly as possible.
"The response at Northern Illinois, from our standpoint, was extraordinary," said Mike Chamness, chairman of the Illinois Terrorism Task Force.
Students were notified within 20 minutes that a shooting occurred, to take cover and stay away from some parts of the campus, Chamness said. At Virginia Tech, it took more than two hours to issue an alert.
Students at NIU also were relaying text messages to each other. One idea discussed by the task force was that colleges should use multiple means to convey an emergency message to students, including encouraging the use of text messaging.
Rep. Rich Myers, R-Colchester, said Western Illinois University in his district just went through a drill to notify students in case of emergency.
"They sent text messages to cell phones, voice mail, e-mail," Myers said. "As I understand it, it was a very successful test."
What to do after an emergency is only part of the task force's responsibility. It is also examining prevention. A full report is scheduled to be delivered April 1.
"A mental health survey is still being completed," Chamness said. "That purpose is to look at ways to identify potential issues and how to deal with those, how to get help to those people."
That will probably require the assistance of students themselves.
"Be alert. If you see something that looks suspicious, don't be shy or embarrassed about picking up the phone and calling law enforcement authorities," Chamness advised. "You may be the person who helps prevent something."
At the same time, Chamness said there didn't seem to be the "red flags" in the NIU case that there were at Virginia Tech.
"I don't think there's a panacea out there for how you stop this," he said. "You're talking about somebody who walked into a classroom."
Chamness said state officials will meet with NIU staff in coming weeks to assess what happened and what parts of the response plan worked and if any didn't.
Rep. Dan Brady, R-Bloomington, said he wants two House committees — Higher Education and Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness — to convene a joint session in a few weeks to review the NIU situation.
"I want to have a joint hearing once reports are released and more information can be obtained as to how we can be better informed and better prepared," said Brady whose district includes Illinois State University. "Even though it looks like everyone worked in synch, there's always something to learn."
Doug Finke can be reached at (217) 788-1527.
Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0</a>.
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Original Source:
<a href="http://ghns.ghnewsroom.com/regional_news/midwest/illinois/news/x230383197">http://ghns.ghnewsroom.com/regional_news/midwest/illinois/news/x230383197</a>
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eng
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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0
Title
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NIU response helped by Virginia Tech lessons
campus safety task force
e-mail
house committees
mental health survey
niu
northern illinois university
text messages
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Document
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Contributor
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Kacey Beddoes
Creator
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Editorial Staff
Date
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2008-02-18
Description
An account of the resource
Issue Date:Monday October 15, 2007
Section: Editorial Section
Six months after the tragedy at Virginia Tech, West Virginia University and others institutions across the country have taken positive steps to reevaluate their security approaches, but there is still work to be done.
On Friday, the University president, student body president and head of the campus police announced a new system to send text messages and e-mail alerts in the case of crimes, weather delays and closures, and other emergencies at WVU. Everyone is encouraged to sign up now for the service at <a href="http://emergency.wvu.edu">http://emergency.wvu.edu</a>.
University President Mike Garrison has a history of emphasizing security at WVU. When he was president of the student body in the early 1990s, he worked on lighting issues around campus, as well as block captains and watch programs in Sunnyside. And now, as president, he is moving in the right direction.
But the system doesn't solve everything.
The University has a history of suppressing the true number of crimes it is required by federal law to report. Three years ago, Security on Campus, Inc., a watchdog group, filed a federal complaint against WVU for crime misreporting and said the University's behavior represented "the worst case of corruption we have encountered to date."
Hopefully all the problems have been worked out. But it's hard to be sure if the University is doing better or worse on campus safety issues if we can't rely on figures from the past.
Nor has the administration made good choices about weather cancellations and delays. In March, the University canceled classes for a snowstorm only after power had been lost and restored on the Evansdale Campus, the PRT had been unreliable or shut down, buses ran behind schedule and professors and students endured a dangerous day of trying to make it to class or sitting in nearly empty classrooms.
These are not things that a new text system will solve - this is decision-making and the decision about what to do in a situation has nothing to do with the ability to announce it.
Hopefully no one ever gets a message that there is a fire or shooting. But, if the unfortunate should happen, the language of the text should be as clear and concise as possible.
Casual text message language, replacing numbers for letters and abbreviations that don't make sense should be avoided.
Remember that officials at Virginia Tech said their campus was safe after the first death in the morning. Then there were 31 more.
It's good that the University has entered a new era and is getting in touch with students via the medium of our time. We just hope they also change their approach and utilize this new message system properly.
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Original Source: The Daily Athenaeum
<a href="http://www.da.wvu.edu/show_article.php?&story_id=30553">http://www.da.wvu.edu/show_article.php?&story_id=30553</a>
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eng
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Leann Ray <Leann.Ray@mail.wvu.edu>
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Sign up for new text alert system
campus crime
e-mail
text alert system
wvu
-
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Contributor
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Kacey Beddoes
Creator
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Editorial Staff
Date
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2008-02-18
Description
An account of the resource
Issue Date:Wednesday April 18, 2007
Section: Editorial Section
There are still many questions left for the Blacksburg, Va., community as police and federal agents continue to investigate the gunman's trail.
But there is one startling fact we are all aware of: Students and the rest of the university's community were not notified of the first shooting until nearly two hours later. And when they were notified, many did not take the message seriously until, in many cases, they saw bloodshed for themselves.
It's hard not to think about how West Virginia University and others across the country would respond if a similar situation took place on their campuses.
As explained in a news story in today's Daily Athenaeum, WVU officials say they do have an emergency plan in place.
But does it need to be modified to be made more efficient?
In a much less dire situation, WVU administrators took several hours to cancel classes when roads were too icy to drive on during a snowstorm last March.
When Virginia Tech officials did notify the campus of the shootings, the message was mass delivered through an e-mail. Many VT students wondered aloud to the media if the tragedy could have only been an incident if they were notified earlier.
And what if e-mails simply can't be read when the power shuts off or students and faculty don't check their accounts?
We're glad to hear University officials are looking into campus-wide text messaging and messaging centers that are visible to traffic. Innovative measures such as these are some of the best ways to reach everybody at once nowadays. Still, in an emergency, cell phone network lines could become loaded, making messages hard to send. That's why universities, including WVU, need to work with local companies and networks to make plans for mass communication during security threats.
Of course, nothing can change Monday's monstrosity. But if communities and administrators work together now, they may be able to prevent another tragedy.
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Originial Source: The Daily Athenaeum
<a href="http://www.da.wvu.edu/show_article.php?&story_id=27573">http://www.da.wvu.edu/show_article.php?&story_id=27573</a>
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eng
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Leann Ray <Leann.Ray@mail.wvu.edu>
Title
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Better safety measures needed
e-mail
emergency plan
messaging centers
safety measures
text messaging
wvu