Students of Millikin University have not been utilizing Public Safety’s Send-Word-Now, an electronic messaging service that informs students of emergencies, ranging from weather alerts to potential risks across campus. This lack of use has caused increasing concern from Public Safety.

The messaging service was implemented several years ago in order to allow students a more convenient way to access weather and security threats.

“It’s a multi-channel approach to Crisis Alert Communications,” Christopher Ballard, director of Public Safety, said. “It will do a voice call, it will do an email, it will do texting and students can register up to five points of contact for it so they have multiple devices.”

Although the messaging service is a convenient way for students to access information, very few students have been taking the initiative to use the messaging system. Ballard further elaborated that the reminder sent out to students to utilize the system was sent because, “we’ve been really good at getting a lot more students enrolled in the program; I think our first week program has been helpful for that.

“The challenge we had, [which] I noticed when we did our last test, was that we only had twelve percent of our users using the text message option, which was odd to me, because most of our students communicate almost solely by text.”

Ballard further explained that recent studies show that messaging systems are frequently overloaded by text messages because of its accessibility and convenience. Because of this convenience, Ballard stated that the reminder was a way to increase student awareness of the text messaging option offered by the Send-Alert-Now communication service, as texting is a more expedient way for users to access alerts rather than using the voicemail system.

“You can just read it very quickly,” Ballard stated, “and it will work even when the system is overloaded. That is what history tells us, anyway.”

Due to the lack of users, the reminder was sent to also inform Millikin students to actually register in the messaging service itself. The Public Safety office hopes that students across campus first enroll in the program itself through the email alert system, and then students utilize the system through other various electronic devices.

The lack of users for the system also has the Public Safety office concerned about how students will receive messages instantly in times of crisis, according to Ballard.

“It’s really critical, especially in the first hour or so of an emergency,” Ballard said. “We are not going to have the ability right away to communicate through the website, and relying on twitter and other forms of social media [is not adequate.] So we are going to be utilizing Send-Word-Now to send out those preliminary messages, and then we will go to the website to post more comprehensive updates as to what is going on.”

Pertaining to the lack of utilization in the text messaging system, Ballard also explained how it is most likely the product of lack of information, which will most likely be elaborated on for next school year.