Beware, Fairfield students: in the next few weeks your phone will ring and you will be contacted by Public Safety.
But relax, you’re not in any major dilemma or wanted for a crime. All Fairfield students and faculty are now taking part in the testing of StagAlert, the University’s emergency notification system.
Upon receiving reports of a circumstance in which the student body is in imminent danger, especially an ‘active shooter situation,’ the entire Fairfield population will be notified immediately via e-mail, text message, and phone call with safety instructions.
StagAlert, through the Connect-ED program, is part of Fairfield’s ‘Rapid Response’ initiative, which refers to ‘the course of action taken by responding officers who will take necessary action’ to put students out of harm’s way, according to the Fairfield University website.
‘This system disseminates critical information fast and efficiently to members of the University community,’ said Todd Pelazza, Director of Public Safety, on the Public Safety portion of Fairfield’s Web site.
Public Safety and the Office of the Vice President for Administrative ‘amp; Student Affairs recently contacted all students, urging them to update their contact information in order to successfully run the StagAlert system’s test.
‘Just knowing that Fairfield has an emergency alert system should definitely make students feel safe on campus, although I’m sure they do already,’ said Kelsey Schroeder ’10, member of Fairfield’s Student Senate. ‘If something bad happens at Fairfield, we’re going to know about it.’
Students were instructed through StagWeb that ‘StagAlert is intended for use only in extraordinary situations when there is a clear and active (e.g., in progress or pending) emergency or risk to the University Community that requires both notification and immediate action by the intended recipients.’
After the mass shooting tragedy at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007, in which students were not notified of the mortal danger until two hours after the first shooting, many colleges and universities nationwide took major steps to increase security and prepare properly for such an emergency situation.
‘Virginia Tech had the capability on April 16 to send messages to the student body, faculty, and other staff via a broadcast e-mail system,’ according to the Virginia Tech Review Panel’s presentation to Virginia Governor Tim Kaine.
The presentation goes on to admit that Virginia Tech, at the time of the incident, had ‘no way to send a message to all cell phones,’ and that ‘e-mail messages sent by the university may not have been read by every user within minutes or even hours.’
Virginia Tech’s e-mail system at the time had 36,000 registered addresses.
On the University’s Emergency Plan Web site, Fairfield’s Public Safety department stresses that ‘prevention, mitigation, planning, preparation, response, and recovery are all part of the elements of our Emergency Plan, which is reviewed and updated on a continuous basis.’
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