What you don’t know might hurt you February 13, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in life, university.trackback
In 2007 there were several tragic incidents on college campuses around the USA. Sadly, University of Washington was one of them. As a result of this many campuses have instituted early warning systems of one kind or another. At UW one of the forms this takes is the campus police now send Warning Notifications of anything involving a dangerous situation around campus.
So, if someone is mugged late at night, or held up at gun point, or a person is attacked — anything that put a person in danger — these warnings are sent out. They contain a fairly complete description of the incident along with its status (caught the perpetrator or not), and then a helpful list of things to do to avoid getting yourself into a similar situation.
I appreciate these emails, and I don’t want them to stop. But I find them a bit spooky. I’ve been at the UW for over 7 years now. I’ve never thought of it as having crime. It must have, obviously - 35,000 students, and a large campus in an urban area. And these emails are thankfully rare. But it does make me realize my idilyic representation of the campus isn’t quite right.
It’s good to hear that your alert system works well when it is needed. I signed up for UCLA’s system in which they coordinate email and text messages/calls to cell phones. The first, and only, phone call I have received was a recording from the new football coach promising to have a good season.
Ok. I laughed out loud when I read this!