BUPD: Alert System test ?successful?

A Boston University Alert System test on Tuesday assessed the effectiveness of BU’s emergency notifications to the student body, faculty and staff.

The alert was dispatched at about 11:50 a.m. and advised all students, faculty and staff who received the notification to contact BU Alert in case of a technical problem, according to the texts, voice mails and emails sent out to the community.

Boston University Police Department chief Thomas Robbins said the department’s dispatchers send out the notifications.

“[The alert is] utilized in case of a campus emergency…an incident that, for instance, involves a building evacuation…something that affects the large community,” he said.

He said the alert on Tuesday went “very well.”

“We have a committee with various representatives from across the university, and we’ll bring the committee together and look at the test in terms of performance and see if we need to do anything with it,” he said. “By all accounts it was a successful test.”

Peter Fiedler, the vice president for administrative services, said he oversees the alerts from BUPD that come to his office.

He explained that notifications work through Send Word Now, a “system that utilizes text, voice and mail services that send out alerts to whatever company or group they want to send alerts do.”

These notifications include gas leaks, power outages or water main breakages, such as the breakage in Boston’s water system last May that affected the entire city, he said.

“BU has been using it since we began to use the BU alert system, since the Virginia Tech massacres…right after it took place there was an unfortunate awakening among universities around the country,” Fiedler said. “BU was one of first universities in the country to get on the bandwagon and we’ve been using it since then and improving it.”

Fiedler said all members of the community are encouraged to partake in the system.

“All students are required to provide an emergency phone number which are used only for emergencies…some opt to put their home number instead which kind of defeats the purpose of the system,” he said.

All BU students are required to use the alert system, and more than a quarter of all faculty also get alerts, which is typical for a university, he said.

Some students said they found the notifications effective.

“They probably didn’t need to test it since we’ve had like three alerts this past month,” said Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences freshman Andrew VanNostrand. “I thought it was funny. But the system is effective.”

Others, like College of Arts and Sciences senior Krhystyne Pablo, are not sure if the notifications are effective.

“We rely on our phones, and I don’t see the email notification until after I get home, hours after something’s happened,” she said. “But overall, BU’s doing a good job.”