One month after two doctoral students were shot in the Edward Gay Apartments, the University first tested its campus-wide Emergency Text Message System. About 95 percent of the service’s 13,657 registered users received the University’s trial text message Friday morning, according to final data released Tuesday. Brian Voss, chief information officer, said he thinks the test will improve the service for the students, faculty and staff who use it. “We’re pleased with the results of the test, and we learned a lot about text messages going through this process,” Voss said. ClearTXT, the emergency system’s vendor, began sending the text message at 9:02 a.m. on Friday, about two minutes after the University launched the test. By 9:17 a.m., the test was complete. “The Virginia Tech incident caused a lot of institutions, including us, to get this kind of system and add it to the communication tool kit,” Voss said. “And I think our experience showed a lot of institutions that you really need to test it to know what’s going to happen.” Voss said clearTXT places a few restrictions on bulk text messaging, including a character limit. The message read, “TEST LSU EMERGENCY TEST – This is a test of the LSU Emergency Text Messaging System. No emergency exists. This is a test.” “So we can’t send real long, elaborate messages,” Voss said. “In fact, they’re very short. I think 120 characters is the limit that we’re working with here, and so again, that reinforces why text messaging can’t be the be-all end-all because we can’t send a lot of detail.” Voss said he does not anticipate every person on campus to enroll in the service because of cell phone plan restrictions, text messaging costs and other individual reasons. “Heading toward 13,000 people is good, but we really think that we should probably be more between [18,000] and 24,000 to really feel like we covered the maximum benefit here,” Voss said. Registered users who did not receive the text message are directed to www.lsu.edu/etxt. Voss said University officials plan to start contacting each of the registered users who did not receive the message to find out why it failed. He said the Web site has received 221 messages about text failures since Friday. Kristen Jones, mass communication sophomore, said she signed up for the text alerts when the University implemented the service. Like many other students who did not receive the initial text message in December after Chandrasekhar Reddy Komma and Kiran Kumar Allam were shot, she was concerned about the system’s abilities. Jones’ concerns were lifted Friday when the system’s test worked. “I got it in the morning as soon as I got to class, so I was pretty happy with the results,” Jones said.
—-Contact Angelle Barbazon at [email protected]