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Parents demanding text alerts from children’s colleges after massacres
BALTIMORE -
After the massacres at Northern Illinois University and Virginia Tech, parents have demanded they receive cell phone text alerts from their children’s colleges in case of emergency. “We’re finding now that parents want the call, too,” said Robert Lang, a college safety expert who spoke Thursday at a conference of school and government building managers in Baltimore. “It’s a phenomenon with parents who say, ‘Look, I’m putting my kid through school and we want the best, and if you can’t protect my child, we’ll enroll them in another school.’ ” Last week, the phone system at Ferrum College in Virginia jammed with calls from worried parents who received text alerts about a gunman in a dormitory. Even if it leads to a flood of calls, parents deserve to know about emergencies, officials at Maryland universities say. In November, Towson University and the University of Baltimore sent out alerts after receiving anonymous threats, and the College of Notre Dame activated its messages in September when a man tried to abduct a student. It’s not just parents of teenagers clamoring for mobile messages. The families of kindergartners and graduate students alike are asking to “opt in” to receive texts, said Al Catanzarite, president of VeraText Interactive, a mobile-communications company in Pittsburgh. Some schools have automated phone calls to families’ land lines, but with both parents working, “that’s like trying to hit a moving target,” he said. After Columbine, Virginia Tech and other shootings, schools are becoming more willing to share information about incidents. “Twenty years ago, people didn’t want to air their dirty laundry,” said Jonathan Kassa, executive director of Security on Campus, a nonprofit started by the parents of Jeanne Clery, who was killed in 1986 in her Lehigh University dorm room. But now, said Joseph Zerhusen, Villa Julie’s security director, “If the parents want to be notified, why not?” kvolkmann@baltimoreexaminer.com |