Most of the time, receiving a text message in class can get you called out by the professor, but in the case of an emergency at Portland State, professors could be grateful for the interruption.
Portland State’s emergency notification system, PSUAlert, utilizes SMS texts, e-mails and voice messages to broadcast information during an emergency. The first quarterly system test of the year will go out today to those set up through Banweb or MyPSU to receive them.
“Basically [PSUAlert] is a system that will simultaneously send alerts to cell phones as a text and to e-mails,” explained Sharon Blanton, chief information officer for the Office of Information Technologies. “We can also do voice—text-to-speech—and the message is also distributed to desktop phones.”
The types of alerts sent out include weather or safety issues and any problems with facilities that warrant area evacuation.
“We use the incident command structure, so that when there is an emergency, an emergency command team is formed…[which is] authorized to send out the information,” Blanton said.
Lieutenant Tracey Miller recalls the use of the alert system during last winter’s snowstorm.
“The notice was sent out, people called into dispatch—a lot of info goes through dispatch—wondering if classes are canceled,” Miller said. “Then we work with [the Center for Student Health and Counseling] and Facilities to get the info out and use whatever resources to spread that info.”
According to Blanton, the alert system has a number of prewritten messages in the database that can be sent out as quickly as possible when needed. In the case of a water main break, for example, only the name of a building would have to be entered into the system before it’s sent, Blanton said.
“In the heat of the moment, we have data ready and waiting so that someone doesn’t have to sit there and think of the best way to say something in 140 characters or less,” Blanton said. “The whole point is when there’s truly an emergency, we can get the information out there.”
Although cell service is weak in some parts of campus, including basement classrooms and offices, the university hopes to reach as many people as possible by including e-mail and voicemail alerts to desk phones.
“We’d like to hit as many people as possible so that the odds are in our favor,” Blanton said. “We try to blanket a group as much as possible—it pretty much guarantees the message gets to someone, somehow.”
Even though these messages contain crucial information, the university is required to offer an option for students to discontinue receiving text messages from PSUAlert.
“We hope that you will choose to continue receiving these text messages, however new telecommunications regulations require that we provide opt out information on our text messages,” said an e-mail from CPSO and OIT sent to Odin accounts.
CPSO and OIT test PSUAlert every quarter to make sure it is working properly.
Blanton explained that the goal of today’s testing is to “make sure data is flowing correctly and the message arrives in an appropriate amount of time.”
“We’d like to see everyone get the message within one hour,” Blanton said.