The DP pointed out today:
The Division of Public Safety tested its new PennAlert emergency-notification system [last] Thursday, with 95.3 percent of the targeted individuals receiving a notification either by phone, e-mail or text-message.
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“Busy signals or poor reception caused the few notification failures.”
I have a class at Annenberg and a class at David Rittenhouse Laboratories. Reception in both classrooms is poor and sometimes nonexistent. If an actual emergency did happen, I wouldn’t know about it. But I’m only at those places a few hours a week. Maybe I should worry more about the fact that reception at Hill House is sporadic. My cell phone often has little reception in my room. If an emergency happened at Hill, I’d be lucky find out.
So what should the University do? Or what should we do? Some say Verizon is the best. I’m on T-Mobile. Time to make the switch. For safety’s sake.
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November 5th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
Another thought: Many profs are persistent about students turning off cell phones during class. However, should there be an emergency, no one would receive the alerts on their phones! Granted, we all just put our phones on vibrate or check them silently many times during class… but shouldn’t class policy be in sync with the goals of PennAlert? Perhaps professors should stop giving us dirty looks when our phones buzz and instead thank us for always being on alert…
November 8th, 2007 at 2:30 pm
What about Penn’s constituency on financial aid that are too poor for anything aside from Boost Mobile? Will they have to endure a 10 cent charge for emergency news because their dad didn’t give them a trust fund when they graduated high school?