<p>This article indicates that the number of students signing up for text alerts regarding safety issues or crisis situations on campuses is small. Colleges have been implementing this, students have just been too lazy to sign up or consider it an invasion of privacy. If larger percentages of students don't utilize these systems, I'm afraid that colleges will simply do away with this method of alerts. </p>
<p>Students</a> slow to embrace text alerts - Yahoo! News</p>
<p>I was automatically signed up at my college. There was some sort of gas leak on the opposite end of campus where they had to evacuate a building or two. I wound up getting four texts on my cell phone about it and four calls on my office phone.</p>
<p>I’m actually kinda annoyed at the text messages since each one costs me 15 cents, and it’s hard for me to see a reason for them to use text alerts when most of the buildings here are shielded and most people can’t even get signals in their own offices. =</p>
<p>Also got one from my undergrad institution that I haven’t even been associated with in over six months a while back, not sure when they’re going to take me off of that list since I don’t have login access to modify my profile anymore. :(</p>
<p>My medical school has implemented one of these systems…and I wasn’t really enthused to sign up.</p>
<p>First, I’ve not spent much time actually on campus of late. I’ve been at other hospitals, other clinics, other towns. So it doesn’t seem like it’ll be helpful to me most of the time.</p>
<p>Second, they’ve never been clear about exactly what things will trigger an alert. I’d feel more like signing up if I knew that it was only going to be very serious issues.</p>
<p>Third, I don’t think it’s going to help much at the hospital I attend…I mean there are thousands of people coming and going each day. Plenty of them have known psychiatric illnesses, and it’s well known that the most common reason patients with serious pysch disorders are re-admitted to the hospital is because they’ve stopped taking their meds. Further, the hospital has very few areas which are completely off-limits or lockable and many of those that are have special access restrictions, so you couldn’t get into them even if you wanted to protect yourself. Someone methodical enough could do a lot of damage. </p>
<p>So in the end, it’s somewhat fatalist, but I’m not sure it’s going to be an effective intervention.</p>