Ready for anything

IU’s new emergency alert system is filling up my voice mail and inbox like a needy ex-lover.

On Sept. 5, the IU-Notify system was tested in the form of loud sirens, cryptic e-mails and a voice mail message left on my phone and yours from IU Police Department Capt. Jerry Minger. (I don’t remember giving this dude my number or permission to call me during class, so that kind of feels threatening in its own way).

Now, I’m as pro-safety and anti-school shootings as the next guy. But my phone bill is high enough each month without the police department hitting up my cell all the time just to check in. I figured I probably wouldn’t hear from them again anyway, though, considering that in my past three years here, the IU campus has failed to be invaded by ninjas or spontaneously burst into flames.

But less than 24 hours later, IU-Notify woke me up by sending a cautionary text to my roommate at 5 a.m., which I would later learn was an unhelpful five hours after the incident it was cautioning her against. To be texting mere acquaintances at the crack of dawn, I can only assume that IUPD was lonely and wasted. My roommate deleted the text in her sleep before I got to read it, but I assume it was something along the lines of “omg b careful 2nite, gurl! XOXO.”

A few hours later I checked my e-mail, where I had a message informing me that a 5-foot-11 male in a white hoodie had cut three students on campus the night before with a sharp-edged weapon.

My immediate response was that this e-mail was lacking some vital details. Was the white hoodie from T.I.S. or was it from the Ku Klux Klan? Also, “sharp-edged weapon” is very vague and could mean anything from a blade of grass to a cheese grater. A friend of mine suggested that maybe it was one of those sweet bookstore pens that have the football schedule built into it. That would be kind of intense.

The e-mail gave me a link that directed me to a page where I could find more information. I still couldn’t find the answers to my questions, but I did find a disproportionately large graphic of a piece of police tape covering a picture of the sample gates and warning me in bold capital letters to “be ready for anything.” The Web site also informed me that the current national threat advisory is yellow, which means that we, as a nation, are at “significant risk of terrorist attack.” We were probably only at a general risk before IU-Notify texted homeland security about Bloomington’s very own terrorist with his sharp-edged football schedule pen.
But anyway, over a week has passed now with no new notifications of threats. So I guess I’ve heard the last from IU-Notify for good, or until the next thing starts to go even slightly wrong.