Marist behind in security precautions
Sue Ledversis awoke to the buzz of her cell phone at 3 am on Sunday morning. Rolling over to view the bright LCD screen, Ledversis was presented with an automated text message alerting her to a tragedy on her campus.
Shortly after 12 am on October 18, starting cornerback and Uconn student Jasper Howard was stabbed to death on the University of Connecticut campus. Howard was murdered outside of a university-sanctioned dance, after a verbal fight between several students and non-students. Members of the University of Connecticut community received a text message alert very shortly after the incident.
“Waking up to a message that said a student was murdered was scary,” stated Ledversis, “ But knowing we had that kind of system in place incase we were in danger was really reassuring.”
All students at Uconn have to do is register their phones, follow the link online, and they will receive the text message alert service free of charge.
Uconn is just one of the thousands of schools across the United States, including Virginia Tech, Eastern Michigan University, Colorado University, Boston University, and St. John’s University, that have now implemented text message alert systems on their campuses.
In early 2007, a masked gunman was wandering the Queens campus of St. John’s University. Students were swiftly alerted by a text message system and the gunman was apprehended without so much as a shot fired, nor a student injured.
“After what happened at Virginia Tech, I noticed my school, and a lot of my friends schools having things like this for their students. Uconn is such a big school so a lot of the time it’s hard to hear things word of mouth,” Ledversis said. “Getting text messages really makes sure that we’re all up to date if there’s any dangers on campus. It works because obviously, as college student, we’re all always on our phones anyways.”
Text message alert systems are such an important alert system, are relatively inexpensive, and are popping up everywhere, from community colleges, to state schools, to private universities.
So why doesn’t our school, a private four-year school, a school that was just given a 75 million dollar donation, have nothing like this to protect their students?
“Honestly, I think it’s absurd,” said John Signorello, a junior at Marist College. “It doesn’t matter what college you are, what kind of students you have, crazy things can happen everywhere. There are so many things that have happened on campus that we haven’t even been alerted about.”
Marist is one of the schools noticeably absent from the list of those who provide cell phone alert systems. Although students are occasionally alerted via e-mail about situations on campus, sometimes two to three days later, there is no system in place to warn students of current dangers.
“It just makes no sense to me. We have a wide open campus, basically anyone can walk onto, and we’re not really in the safest area,” stated Signorello. “If we were in class, or anywhere on campus really, and something terrible like a school shooting happened, we wouldn’t find out and would be put in real danger. Why wouldn’t the school want text messages alerts when that small change would make us so much safer?”
When Marist security head John Gildard was questioned about the absence of a text message alert system, and if the school may see one in the near future, no comment was made. It seems as though students must be their own advocates in this situation, working to secure ourselves the safety precautions our tuition pays for, and the alert system we deserve.
