UPennAlert - Better be safe than sorry

In an effort to enhance campus safety, a nine-member panel led by Vice President for Public Safety Maureen Rush discussed a new system to inform students about campus emergencies last night in Houston Hall.

Among the panelists were Rick Sanfilippo, director of security and technical services for Penn's Division of Public Safety, Mark Dorsey, chief of the Penn Police and Maura Johnston, assistant privacy officer. The event was hosted by Fox Leadership.

"Safety and security are a shared responsibility," said Rush, whose office has implemented UPennAlert - the newest tool in Penn's crime fighting arsenal. "We would like to make sure that as you work, play and travel about the city area you can do so safely," she said.

UPennAlert is an emergency system that requires registration through PennPortal. All students are instructed to enter their cell-phone numbers, e-mail addresses and home phone numbers in the system so that, in the event of an emergency, the University can send out massive group text-messages and e-mails to alert students of potential danger.

Currently, 61 percent of the student body has complied with the University's request to enter their information into the system.

"Hopefully, in your entire four years here, you only receive the message we're going to send out on Feb. 29," said Rush about the training exercise scheduled for that day.

"The first thing is communication," added Sanfilippo. "In light of the events at Northern Illinois, we'd like to solicit some responses from [students]," he said.

After panel members gave brief descriptions about the roles their offices play in ensuring campus safety, Sanfilippo offered what he felt was the most important question of the night.

"The question you should be asking is: 'What is Penn doing to safeguard our community?'" he said.

Johnston talked about identity theft and cautioned about common ways students have their identifications stolen, such as the removal of papers from their garbage cans and subsequent use of information from those documents.

College junior Amy Lee, doesn't quite worry as much about identity theft as she worries about bodily harm.

"Personally, I'm more worried about walking home at 4 a.m. from Van Pelt," she said. "I most definitely feel that security is a big issue at Penn, given the recent surge in crime," she added.

Wharton sophomore Benjamin Scholom said he planned on signing onto the UPennAlert system right after leaving the seminar. He was impressed by what he considers a conscious effort by the University to tighten security around campus.

"I figured out a lot about the safety system that I never knew," he said. "I'm going to find those numbers and get on the PennAlert system. Evidently, it's something we should all be doing," he said.

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