When several aggressive assaults were reported near Penn’s campus on Saturday night, the Division of Public Safety did not send out e-mail or text alerts to warn the community of the danger.
Student reactions to the absence of a notification suggest that they are still confused about the purpose of the alert system.
The backlash over the lack of an alert following the shootout near 40th and Locust streets last semester made it clear that many students would have preferred to receive a notification. In a letter to the editor in The Daily Pennsylvanian, Executive Vice President Craig Carnaroli and Provost Vincent Price said they would use the incident to plan the University’s response to future crises.
While we acknowledge that each emergency poses unique challenges, we encourage DPS to publish guidelines that govern its decision to send alerts.
The DPS website simply states that an alert will be sent “in the event of a major emergency affecting the Penn and University City community” but offers no clues about what defines such an emergency.
Publishing a set of rules that standardizes the notification procedure would make clear to the community which kinds of incidents warrant alerts and which do not.
DPS will be doing students and itself a favor by expressly defining when the broadcast of an alert is justified.
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