Universities scramble for notification technology

In the wake of the horrific mass shooting at Virginia Tech on Monday, colleges and universities in the U.S. are scrambling to buy notification technology that will allow them to connect with wired college students via cell phone, e-mail or SMS.

Ken Dixon, vice president of sales and marketing at MIR3 of San Diego, which makes emergency notification and disaster recovery software, says his company has been deluged with calls and e-mail since the shootings.

“We’ve heard from the University of Michigan, the University of San Diego, the University of Chicago, the ivys, a bunch of Big 10 schools,” said Dixon.

The company has not spoken with anyone from Virginia Tech, he said.

Administrators at colleges and universities may be shaken by criticism of Virginia Tech’s handling of the April 16 shooting, during which two hours passed between two fatal shootings by disgruntled student Cho Seung-Hui is a fatal dorm shooting, during which time many students went to classes, unaware that anything was amiss.

The university’s decision to send an e-mail to students warning them of the violence has been criticized as too passive, with many students complaining that they did not check their email account before heading out of their dorms.

University officials have been quoted in reports saying that there was no easy way to contact Virginia Tech’s tens of thousands of on and off campus students, employees and faculty. But Dixon, of MIR3, said that his company’s technology does allow customers to quickly and automatically reach out to tens of thousands of people using a variety of modes — from phone calls, to SMS text messages, to e-mail.

The technology, which costs organizations around $100,000 a year to license, is mostly used by businesses and municipalities for IT alerting and business continuity planning, Dixon said.

The company counts Shell, Visa and Bank of America as customers, as well as local governments in Florida and other states. In recent days, though, it’s been universities who are clamoring for the MIR3 technology.

“The phone has been ringing constantly,” he said. “They’re in reactive mode now. Asking ‘how do we fix this system?'”

Customers can specify multiple modes of communications, and collect responses from recipients. They can also automate a hierarchy of communications, starting with phone calls or e-mail, then switching to SMS, pages and the like for individuals who don’t respond, he said.

Being able to reach students via cell phone is particularly important these days, said Dixon. “Every student is tethered to their cell. Your communication has got to be through that device,” he said.

MIT (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology) also uses the product to notify IT personnel of events, but may expand it to communicate with students as well, Dixon said. (MIT hasn’t yet responded to a request for comment on its plans. )

But emergency notification technology is no easy fix, said David Escalante, CSO of Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.

“Anytime something like this happens, there’s an interplay between the people who are concerned about mitigating the situation and the difficulty of doing the things necessary to mitigate it,” he said.

BC is in the process of sorting out its own emergency response plans, following the Virgina Tech massacre.

“We’re moving in the direction of implementing something but we’re not there yet,” he said. Among the challenges universities like BC face are reaching commuters and off campus students in a timely manner, especially when they might not be on campus and know there’s a problem.

Loudspeakers are good for on-campus students, but not for commuters or students who aren’t on campus.

Cell phone notifications are promising, but could pose problems in classroom environments, if students begin to treat text messages to their phone as communications of the utmost importance that trump lectures or exams, he said.

“We’ve been telling students not to look at their cell phones during exams because we’re worried that friends may SMS them answers to tests. So what do we say now?” Escalante noted. “And, if you have a system where you can broadcast to everyone and it gets used too much, people won’t pay attention,” he said.

Dixon said those fears are real, but that his company’s technology — which requires and monitors responses to messages, can mitigate some of the problems.

The biggest barrier to schools adopting the technology so far has been a concern for student privacy and cost, he said.