The Bona Venture

Issue date: 10/5/07 Section: News

A validation text message received after registering for e2Campus.

More than 500 students, faculty and staff members at St. Bonaventure University have signed up for the e2Campus emergency text messaging and e-mail system as of Tuesday.

The system provides a way for the university to alert students, faculty and staff of an emergency. It allows university officials to log on to the Web site and enter in the message they want to send out to those who have signed up. The message will be received within a minute, Mike Hoffman, executive director of Technology Services, said.

The idea for this system at St. Bonaventure was concieved after the Virginia Tech shooting, Emily Sinsabaugh, vice president for marketing and communications, said. Hoffman and Sinsabaugh began to think of ways to diversify the tools to communicate with students, faculty and staff.

More than other colleges and universities receive emergency texting services from e2Campus.

"The best benefit is it is easy to use," Sinsabaugh said.

Sinsabaugh said that, in the middle of a crisis, it is important to have a multi-dimensional approach to reaching people with important information, not only using text messaging but e-mail and Notice Boards. The campus' network does not host e2Campus, so, in case of a network failure, there would still be a way to communicate quickly and effectively with students, faculty and staff.

Sinsabaugh and Hoffman both said they want to limit the ways the system will be used so that when students, faculty and staff see they have received a message from this service, they know it means business.

Currently Hoffman and Sinsabaugh are the only two administrators able to send a message out, but they are working to develop a succession plan in case they aren't able to send one out.

Sinsabaugh said there has also been discussion of using the bells on campus to create a system based on the rings where students, faculty and staff would be alerted that there was an important message they needed to receive.

Denny Wilkins, associate professor of journalism and mass communication, said this system is good and that the university needs to start somewhere. He added that the existence of this system does not replace proper training for professors on what to do when they receive messages on this system.

"My original concern was what training the university will provide faculty in terms of taking care of students when they are in the classroom," Wilkins said.

"I think it will be beneficial because we use technology a lot," sophomore Trisha Williams said. "Being able to use something most people have on them every day makes this system much more appealing to join."

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