The shootings at Virginia Tech have everybody asking questions.

It’s appropriate, because in the wake of the tragedy, there are thousands of them.

People all over this country are trying to figure out how one person had the ability to take so many lives. Others wonder how the campus community could have prevented it. Everywhere, communities are struggling to understand how this could have happened.

For a lot of these questions, there simply are no answers. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t good questions.

Since Monday, officials in public affairs and public safety have stepped up their ongoing discussion on campus safety. They’re trying to find answers to the good questions, like how to inform the community in the event of an emergency situation.

And they’re coming up with good answers.

Even before the shooting, these groups were coming up with ways to keep students informed about what’s going on and what they should do.

They’ve focused on technology in an attempt to communicate with students using the very same methods we use to communicate with each other. As a part of that, they’ve also embraced the idea of redundancy.

And we are now a part of that redundancy.

Over the past year, the staff at the Technician has put forth the effort to increase the power of our online presence. We now offer blogs and audio slideshows and we even produce a daily podcast that can give you the newspaper’s top headlines.

But for a while now, we’ve had the ability to send e-mails to our registered users to inform them of breaking news. We don’t really use it much, because very few news situations warrant a mass e-mail, but we’re hoping to put this feature to new use.

After engaging in discussions with public safety and public affairs, we’ve established a system to use their information to inform the community in the event of an emergency situation as soon as they make a decision. We’ll have the ability to use this in any kind of emergency situation — fires, weather events or otherwise.

We tested that ability Thursday when we sent out an e-mail to the 626 users who opted into this feature with the site.

That number is low, but it’s rising.

We’re hoping that in the coming months, more people will register with the site to take advantage of the breaking news feature to aid in spreading the word about emergencies on campus. It will only be effective if people opt into it.

It’s another possibility that students can hear about an emergency and react appropriately to it and it’s another way we, as well as other members of Student Media like WKNC 88.1 FM, are trying to step up our efforts to better inform the N.C. State community.

I think the University has come up with the best answer possible to one of the most important questions this tragedy has posed.

And I’m glad the Technician can be a part of that answer.

Send Tyler your thoughts at [email protected].