Zachary Noyce | To text or not to text

Penn's Police can now send you text messages.

On Friday, The Division of Public Safety conducted a comprehensive test of its new emergency alert system. Taking a page from PhillyCarShare's ComprehensiveFieldGuideAboutHowToNameThings, UPennAlert decided in its message that putting spaces between words just takes too long. Thisisanemergency.

If you got a text message (you know, that one with punctuation), voice message or e-mail, good news: The University wants you to live in the event of a serious campus emergency. If not, I think I'd be filling out some transfer applications about now.

I consider myself quite lucky. At 2:35 p.m., I received a text message in the system-wide test. That was only one hour after a co-worker of mine (maybe they're going to send the messages out by GPA in descending order).

Seriously, I'm thrilled about the idea. The tragic shooting in Northern Illinois really drives home the importance of the measure. Last year's massacre at Virginia Tech only further emphasizes the potential of such a system to save lives. If they had received more timely information, many of those students might still be alive today.

Still, I have a lot of questions that need answering.

For starters, under what circumstances would Penn decide to use the alert system?

If we get a message any time there's a violent crime near campus, everyone on pay-per-text plans will only have enough money to go get plastered three times per week instead of four. Then it won't be long until everyone starts opting out of the alert system, making it obsolete and perhaps even forcing a downgrade to two-word status.

Penn DPS says, "In the event of a major emergency affecting the Penn and University City community," UPennAlert will contact us. Does that mean a tsunami on the Schuylkill? A fire in DRL (we can always dream)? How close to campus would a gunman have to be before a chorus of ringtones sounds across campus?

"You don't want to cause unnecessary panic," Wharton freshman Jon Kelly told me. "I think the system should be used only in extreme situations."

Another question that bothers me is who's making this decision in the first place. To make sure that it isn't over-used, there really should be several people involved in the decision. On the other hand, each additional person involved in the decision-making process means more time before the Penn community receives the urgent information.

Finally, what do you say?

The situations in which UPennAlert would prove most invaluable are absolutely unthinkable. Should the alert contain details about the emergency or simply instructions?

I have great confidence in DPS and the Penn Police to take care of me in the event of a major campus emergency. With UPennAlert, they have one more tool in their hands to keep us safe.

But as DPS learns to use this tool, it owes members of the University honest answers to questions like these. Keeping students and staff informed is the best way to ensure that when the time comes, UPennAlert will do what it's designed to do - save lives.

It may take some time for DPS to perfect its usage of the tool, and College freshman Frank Diebold has no problem with that. "I think how they decide to use it over time is going to be interesting to see," he told me, emphasizing that such decisions can really only be made on a case-by-case basis.

"If we can afford 500 plasma screens all over the school, we can afford a safety precaution system," College sophomore Daniel Kattan told me. "I don't like to think about those things. It's good that someone does though."

There may still be some uncertainty about how and when DPS should use the system, but Kattan hit the nail right on the head. "I don't think that people at Virginia Tech are looking back thinking it wouldn't be worth a few false alarms" if they'd had a system like UPennAlert in place.

The execution may be automated, but there's nothing mechanical about the choice to use UPennAlert. We can only hope that the people making those decisions make the right calls. Our lives might depend on it.

Zachary Noyce is a College junior from Salt Lake City, Utah. His e-mail is noyce@dailypennsylvanian.com. The Stormin' Mormon appears Mondays.

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