Emergency alert system requires updates

By Staff Editorial     4/9/09 7:00pm

Not long ago, a member of the Rice staff had been violently assaulted and the perpetrator, a man with a clear description, was on the lam, putting the entire Rice campus at risk for another attack. We wrote - nay, pleaded - with the Rice University Police Department to properly implement and utilize the Emergency Alert System that was put into place almost two years ago ("Safety measures need revamping," Jan. 30). We asked RUPD to alert us whenever the information was pertinent to our safety and well-being. We didn't mind having our inbox full or text messages eaten up, so long as the information sent kept us free from harm and our belongings safe at hand.After all, that's what the system was created for. And while we were eventually alerted of the assault, the details of the situation escaped in an infuriating trickle.

Now, we've had another assault on campus, this time on a student walking alongside Sewall Hall (see story, page 1). When the staff member was assaulted, it was a travesty, a shamelessly despicable act. This time, there is the added aspect that the the victim is one of us, which brings the lack of notifications into an immediate and frustrating light.

Instead of e-mails to a select few students, RUPD's alerts need to go directly to the inbox of every single Rice student, faculty and staff member. When almost no one on the Thresher's editorial staff receives a notification that one of their peers has received an early-morning campus beating, there is a potentially life-threatening problem.

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Clearly, the passage of information was bungled, much like the initial report of the student being struck by a car. While the victim's injuries may not be horrific, any type of physical assault from an unknown assailant threatens us all. RUPD does an admirable job in almost every other respect - after all, the safety we feel within the hedges from their selfless protection. But this aspect of their job needs to be taken care of. If the entire school can be alerted to Rice's merger with the Baylor College of Medicine (ahem), then it should be beyond easy to alert us to a potential threat. We are glad that the MIR3 cap has been raised to 40 minutes, but it is unfortunate that it came to this. We need to know when something like this happens, and we need to know immediately.

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