Opting in to nonsense

What with sexual assaults, threats of violence from a disgruntled student at midterms, suspicious package scares and a partial campus lockdown during finals week, Portland State hasn’t felt very safe lately. And what little information the university releases about these events comes through the emergency alert system first and then is uploaded to the PSU website.

But there’s no reason for people to check the website before going to school on a beautiful spring day or any other non-snow day. And the emergency alert system has more problems than a calculus textbook.

PSU’s emergency alert system is supposed to deliver an alert when campus closes, whether from extreme weather or other life-threatening situations on campus, when there’s an emergency in one of the buildings or when emergency response teams are activated on campus.

The alerts, sent out via text messages, phone calls and emails, indicate the location and whether the incident has an effect on campus activity. In the case of the recent gunman on campus, the alert simply said, “PSU Alert Public Safety and Portland Police are looking for a male subject with a gun near Parking Structure 3. Stay away from the area.”

Later messages informed students that campus activities were continuing as usual and that the structure had been cleared.

However, many students didn’t get these messages. For some it came as a nasty surprise when, on their way to final exams, they found roads to campus blocked off. And when they asked why they hadn’t heard ahead of time, they were told, “You’ve got to opt in to PSU’s alert system.”

That brings about the unavoidable question: Who the heck would make an emergency alert system opt-in only?

Granted, PSU is a big school. It’s tough to keep track of which students are on campus, on distance learning, taking a term off, etc., and chances are there’d be a good amount of difficulty figuring out which of them wants or needs to receive campus notices. However, in cases like a gunman on campus, it’s probably better to send an alert to everyone and risk annoying a few people than send an alert to some and risk harm to others.

If anything, PSU should have taken initiative to ensure alerts would reach enough people. Instead, it left the system as is, content to assume that everyone who wanted to be alerted in case of emergency knew the system was there and how to sign up for it.

A better answer? The system should be opt-out. It’s a logical no-brainer. Students should have to choose not to receive alerts regarding potential hazards, which would lower risk of not getting the message out to those who need it most.

In most cases, opt-out systems are tedious and troublesome, but in emergency cases, opt-in shouldn’t be the default. Safety is more important than tedium.

After all, if there comes a time when things get worse than they did this last term, it’ll probably be a good plan to make sure everyone is safe, not just the small chunk of the PSU community in the know.