IU’s emergency system in place

Students, staff and faculty can now sign up for the campus-wide emergency alert system on OneStart. IU officials announced the OneStart program Wednesday, and are encouraging everyone on campus to sign up.\n“It is very important that students go to the (OneStart) page and add their personal contact information,” said Mark Bruhn, associate vice president for information and infrastructure assurance. “If there’s an emergency on the Bloomington campus, if contact information isn’t provided then it won’t be in the emergency notification system.”\nThe signup page can be accessed by logging into OneStart and clicking on “Go to the Emergency Notification content,” a link that appears on the main OneStart page for students, staff and faculty.\nAs of Nov. 7, the emergency alert system can be used to send e-mails and deliver pre-recorded voice messages to cell phones and landlines. Administrators plan to include text message alerts within two weeks. Users who wish to receive text message alerts will have to sign up when the system is activated and then reply to a confirmation text message.\n“The point we’re trying to make with this is that the students who want to be a part of this absolutely have to go into OneStart and give us their contact info,” IU Media Relations Director Larry MacIntyre said. “The more students who sign up, the more \neffective the system will be.”\nBruhn said students should not just sign up for the e-mail alerts, but also the phone alert system, because e-mail doesn’t get to the recipient immediately.\nIU officials began planning for an emergency alert system in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings last spring. At the time, then-Provost Michael McRobbie and former IU President Adam Herbert called for a University-wide review of campus security measures. Officials decided they needed a way to get the word out about campus emergencies quickly and accurately.\nAccording to an IU media relations press release, emergencies that will precipitate an alert include “any incident that involves death, serious injury, or threat of death or serious injury to people; significant damage to University facilities, property and or data; or significant disruption of University operations.”