While Kathy's article on MOpocket yesterday covers a lot of the deeply saddening buzz around the Virginia Tech massacre and the schools lack of emergency communication preparedness I just wanted to point out a few more things. One of them very very ghostly in my book.

Its an article from this past SEPTEMBER in the Roanoke which eerily begins with talking about a Virginia Tech University man-hut for a double murderer. The story highlights how while they relied on e-mail, the Web and messages sent to dorm phones to get the messages out the ability to reach kids on their cell phone was out of the question.
The article then points out that university officials at Virginia Tech already met with University text message provider E2Campus. But Virginia Tech, like most schools, saw this as to much of an an innovative idea.

"We will certainly be investigating other kinds of communications vehicles," Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said, though he cautioned that a text-messaging system was still a "blue sky idea" that would take investigation to implement.

"Blue Sky" idea, huh? Lets compare this statement to and jump to yesterday and some little blurbs from todays New York Post:

"Before the campus alerts went out, students already began using their cell phones and text messaging to warn one another."

I was in my class... two buildings over,: Michelle Billman told ABC News. Someone got a text message saying something was going on. After that, we where told to stay in the building."

The only reason we knew was someone got a text message... no one was there saying "This is what's going on,'" said Billman, the general manager of the campus radio station.

Steger said the university decided to rely on e-mail and other electronic means of notifying members of the university, but with 11,000 people driving onto campus first thing in the morning, it was difficult to get the word out.

Looks like someone's idea of a "Blue Sky" solution actually seemed like the practical thing to do.
Rafat overt at MocoNews also thinks to think so. Besides pointing out the mobile phone citizen journalism that took place with a Nokia N70, Rafat also pointed out how NYC-based Rave Wireless, even has a blog on campus mobility. Its system differs in that, along with allowing text alerts, it enables college police departments to monitor the locations of students, both on and off campus.
The Roanoke article also lists more companies in the mobile university space.
But the crisis also speaks to a larger communication issue than just text alerts. It speaks to the difficulty that universities have in communicating with college students in general. The concern, therefore, does not just lie with universities themselves but with anyone trying to communicate with this demographic.
So if you are media empire, political campaign or non profit you may want to take a look at how kids on campus are speaking to each other (i.e over their phones) and start thinking about how best to go about with a mobile strategy.

Technorati Tags: sms, text message, e2campus, virginia tech, roanoke, moconews

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