Alerting the campus community

Following the Bridge shooting on Jan. 15, the absence of a UPenn Alert notification sparked dialogue both on and off campus.

While the situations which warrant activation of the emergency notification system continue to be debated, the Division of Public Safety maintains that the UPenn Alert system itself rests on the cutting edge of campus security technology.

Prior to the installation of UPenn Alert in August 2007, DPS issued alerts to students primarily through its web site, University Communications, the Penn homepage and mass e-mails, according to DPS Director of Communications Mitch Yanak. He also named the Daily Pennsylvanian as another means of alerting the community to emergency situations.

Even while utilizing these channels, DPS remained on the lookout for “new methods to get information to a broader audience in a timely manner,” Yanak recalled, adding that DPS had been actively researching alert-system technology as early as 2004.

He cited the prevalence of cell phone users on campus with mobile internet access as a factor contributing to DPS’s adoption of the UPenn Alert system, which has been programmed to keep students and staff informed in emergency situations by sending immediate messages to personal electronic devices.

In 2007, the Virginia Tech tragedy brought campus security procedures on college campuses nationwide under scrutiny, further motivating DPS to develop an effective and up-to-date alert system.

“Virginia Tech acted as a catalyst not only at Penn but at other universities across the country,” Yanak said. “If you look at the evolution of mass emergency alert systems, you’ll find that most of them developed after that incident.”

This heightened national focus on campus security paved the way for the Department of Education’s later amendment to the 2008 Higher Education Opportunity Act, which passed last year. The amendment mandated that each university establish an emergency preparedness plan, procedures by which to test its emergency notification system and specific controls to prevent its “haphazard” use.

However, he noted that Penn had been “looking at” upgrading its alert system before both the Virginia Tech incident and the recent legislation.

Although the UPenn Alert system has been at the center of discussion, the number of walking escort requests has also risen significantly in the wake of the Jan. 15 shooting, according to Yanak.

From the evening of the shooting until Monday, 358 walking escort requests had been submitted to DPS, coming to a total of 587 requests entered since Jan. 1. Last year, 631 walking escort requests were recorded over the entire month of January. The number of escort requests submitted this year since the 15th has already reached 58 percent of last January’s total.

“We’ve definitely seen more [requests submitted] since the shooting, and more compared to last year in general,” he said.

DPS spokeswoman Stef Cella added that she hopes students continue to take advantage of such escort services.

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