BCHeights: Despite the fact that it concurred with the first day of Easter break, Boston College's Emergency Management Services successfully tested the emergency notification system on April 9. The test saw nearly a 30 percent success rate increase from a similar notification test conducted a year ago.

Test preparations began months in advance with monthly meetings of the Emergency Management Team, chaired by John Tommaney, director of emergency management and preparedness, and including groups such as the BC Police Department, the Office of the Provost, the Office of Student Affairs, and the Office of Residential Life, among others. "BC has always had a fairly robust emergency preparedness program," Tommaney said. "[The Emergency Management Team] does the 'what if-ing.' We're not trying to scare everyone, but we want to create a preparedness culture at BC. It's been two years since the Virginia Tech incident, and while the frequency of [this event] is much lower than people realize, it garners a lot more attention."

One of the key changes made by the team since last October's system test was a change in provider to Rave Wireless. The Information Technology Services (ITS) programs at the University conducted research to choose the provider best suited for the community, Tommaney said. "We will continue to test technology, though, and look into innovations like a public address system," he said.

With the former provider, the notification system test had a 40-50 percent overall success rate, which is the typical national average for a first-time test, Tommaney said. The test under the new provider had a 70-80 percent overall success rate, with 100 percent of students receiving e-mail notification and 92 percent of registered cell phones receiving a text message notification. "The vacation actually gave the system greater credence because people in Texas, Florida, Colorado, all over, received the text," Tommaney said. The notification was also posted on the Agora Web site. The text messages were received in 48 seconds, and the e-mails were received in roughly 15 minutes, according to figures provided by Tommaney. "We doubled our capacity in reaching the messaging community," he said. "We went way above the expectations and permeated almost every building at the University, meaning we had very good coverage."

Immediately following the emergency notification system test, Emergency Management Services sent out surveys to 450 community message recipients as well as 160 from ITS. Of those surveyed, only a few people expressed issues with the test, Tommaney said. "I think this means the vendor we picked is very reliable," he said.

Tommaney said that the University had previously tested the vendor on two previous real-life occasions leading to the test. On Dec. 19 and March 2, the system was used to inform faculty and administrative staff of early closures of the University due to bad weather days. While more than 8,000 faculty and staff received a message, students did not receive the message because they occurred during vacations. The test's success will not be abused, though, Tommaney said. The test will be used primarily for natural disasters, fires, and campus infiltrations. "We don't want people to become desensitized," Tommaney said. "We want to reserve it for a necessity, but it's important that people update their contact info for accuracy."