I’ll start with the punchline: read this.
Now for the question …
How do you tell 30,000+ university students that they should not come to campus because of an emergency situation?
How does word get around to students to stay away?
These are questions that campuses are asking themselves more and more. In fact, a few weeks ago UGA was asking this question when a bomb threat at the Student Learning Center shut down that mega-popular study complex & classroom building for 2 hours.
Here, the university didn’t use their post-VaTech shooting alert system. They didn’t send text messages to the 37,000+ subscribers. They didn’t post a note on uga.edu. They didn’t call the media. Heck, my students told me that they did not even put a sign on the doors of the SLC to tell students to clear the area because of the bomb threat (beware: 2nd hand info).
Students found out from each other.
Text messaging, Facebook’ing and the other technology-enabled broadcast systems that our students use spread the word around campus. The AP quotes Pew researcher Amanda Lenhart commenting on recent UW-Madison & St. Johns incidents as saying:
“What better way is there to get in contact with people who always carry technology, or are within shouting distance of it?” Lenhart said. “This is a huge development in terms of school security.”
From UW-Madison’s Facebook flier ad to text messages sent so quickly that someone holding down a suspect felt the message arrive when he apprehended the bad guy, I’d say she’s right!
Coincidentally, one of my research methods groups did their semester project on this very topic. They are looking at this idea of official vs. social network notification of crises on campus in their 2×2 factorial design experiment. What did they find? The most credible sources for notifications during an emergency are still the official ones — friends are nice to warn you away, but we still want to hear it from the official channels.
… and that’s why facebook is worth mega millions… to everyone — not just microsoft.