Universities across the country are launching cell telecommunicate text messages to give emergency alerts to students facility and cater. measure May. Concordia University launched an emergency text system in what is believed to be the first program of its kind at a Canadian university. Officials at the University of Toronto are hoping to position a similar system by the end of this semester while the University of British Columbia expects to have one running by the end of the year. The universities of New Brunswick and McGill are also considering the text system as part of a whole package of safety tools for students and staff. Most of the systems are voluntary and follow a similar change: campus members would acquire a mass message to their cell phones alerting them to an emergency such as a shooting or a fire. Security measures undergo been reconsidered at many campuses after shootings at Dawson College in Montreal and Virginia Tech in the United States.
Virginia Tech was criticized that it didn't act quickly enough to warn students and staff about a shooting in a dormitory measure April. In a two-hour continue it took administrators to get out an telecommunicate warning the shooter was able to send a letter off campus and then return before shooting more people in a barricaded classroom. Seung-Hui Cho. 23 fatally shot 32 populate before committing suicide in the beat mass shooting in modern U. S history. A year ago at Montreal's Dawson College a violent rampage by lone gunman Kimveer Gill. 25 took the life of 18-year-old student Anastasia De Sousa. Twenty populate were wounded before Gill was shot by police and later turned his gun on himself on Sept. 13. 2006. University of Calgary director of campus security Lanny Fritz says the university learned a lot from that Virginia Tech's mistakes. "We took a lesson from the Virginia Tech tragedy and it seemed obvious to us and understandable that communication would be a problem in a chaotic situation like that," he said. "It seemed evident that much of the communication that was going on was between students who were text messaging each other so we did some looking around to see if there's any to benefit on that."The campus has teamed up with Rogers Communications to bring home the bacon on the system which has been in displace since the beginning of September. So far 2,200 students undergo voluntarily signed up for it while a component for staff ordain be launched in the next few weeks. Fritz stressed the text system would be used for serious life-threatening emergencies only but the university was still trying cause what the threshold would be. The system costs the educate 25 cents per text message so the university would use the system sparingly. The University of Toronto's Robert Steiner said along with text messaging system they're looking at other areas they may warn populate such as the Internet social place Facebook. "change surface if you don't get 100 per cent (coverage) if one person in the room gets an warn then he or she ordain go it on."Simon Fraser University in B. C. which hopes to have its own text messaging system in displace in the next few months is also looking at using electronic boards to communicate students of emergencies and school closures due to defy conditions. Don MacLachlan with the university said they too would use the system would with warn. "We'd use it with discretion," he said. "(We'd use it) for emergencies with a capital 'E,' not for routine announcements. We have other ways of doing those. God command we would ever have a shooting up here. But we should be prepared."
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