In a crisis ““ your money or your life?
By Dharmishta Rood
Jan. 21, 2008 9:58 p.m.
The BruinAlert text message system will be tested this Thursday.
What does this mean for you? It can be a test of the possibilities of technology and information, a sign that sites like Twitter and social activities like text messaging can at times carry valuable information, or it can mean nothing for you, if you don’t sign up.
I signed up for the BruinAlert system this week, a system that I think could save students’ lives if there were to be an emergency. The system is free to sign up for, and sign up is through your Bruin OnLine account. The text messages get sent to your phone, and you get charged like a regular text message, i.e. the 10 cents it costs you to receive a text message.
More than 11,500 students have signed up, still only representing 31 percent of graduate and undergraduate classes combined. I was surprised so few people had signed up.
Many students have been concerned with receiving too many alerts and wonder what exactly counts as an emergency.
An earthquake, police action, electrical outage, very extreme traffic that would prevent students from leaving campus or some kind of a major event like the shooting at Virginia Tech are the types of things that would be sent in text messages.
This quarter they will also install an outdoor speaker system in three locations along the center parts of campus, in Royce Quad, the athletic field area by Drake Stadium and the Intramural Fields, and one on the Hill.
The alerts would also be broadcast on AM 1630, the on-campus television station and the UCLA Web site.
“This is really aimed for major emergencies,” said Jack Powazek, associate vice chancellor for UCLA General Services. “We do not make it such that you receive (a text message) two or three times a week.”
His concern is that students will brush off the messages if they are issued for smaller, less important alerts.
Brittany Letto, a second-year business economics student, said she signed up for the alerts right away.
She said she could understand why many students would brush off the alerts and not sign up.
“When I first got the e-mail I thought it was spam,” said Woj Wojtowicz, a biochemistry graduate student.
But then she e-mailed the dean’s office to clarify, and signed up.
“My only concern,” said Wojtowicz, “is how much information you can send in a text message.”
The people working to create the BruinAlert system face a few challenges.
Because the expectation is that people will want to have news faster and faster, Powazek has seen in his 30 years at UCLA that students’ expectations for receiving information in a timely manner have increased.
“People look at their watch and it’s the second hand that you test how fast you get a message out,” Powazek said.
But this is the future of ubiquitous technology, and we can shape a safer future based on what we do with it now.
“That’s our challenge, to put out correct information in the initial stages of an emergency,” Powazek said. He said he sees that technology for communication in these types of situations can be very beneficial.
Throughout the various alert systems implemented on campus, students have more opportunities to be aware of and react to emergencies.
The next step is to “tie these different technologies together such that human beings can keep up with what’s possible through technology,” Powazek said.
To me, the choice is simple ““ if I get infrequent alerts that could save a life, albeit mine or someone else I am able to alert, it is worth my 10 cents and the $132,000 per year the school is paying to keep us safe.
“I get free text messages, but even for a lot of people that don’t,” said Sherif Richman, a second-year philosophy student, “it’s still better to pay a dime than pay your life.”
