Echo Times

Issue date: 3/3/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Joy Davis The Marin Community College District's Police Department has posted signs and banners around COM to encourage students to sign up for the alert service

The College of Marin campus police are giving you the best excuse ever to have your cell phone on at school. COM recently obtained a text messaging system, called the "Emergency Mobile Alerting System," (EMA system) that would notify students of danger on campus.

Joining the message system itself is free, but standard text messaging rates do apply for messages you send and receive. Text message fees depend on your individual cell phone plan.

In order to receive emergency text messages from COM, students must sign up one of two ways. You can write a text message to the number 253788 with the letters "MCCD" in the body of the message, then reply "Y" to the confirmation message you receive. Or, you can sign up online at www.alertu.org/mccd.

In the event of a dangerous situation at COM (such as a gas leak or a suspicious person), the campus police would use the EMA system to send a brief text message to students to inform them. If you had more information about the situation, you could reply to that text message and tell the campus police more. "It gives us a lot more eyes and ears on campus," said Sergeant Darryl Kesecker of the COM police department, who helped COM obtain the system. "It's something that we realized we could use to tell as many people as possible (about a dangerous situation) in the shortest amount of time."

The EMA system was set up over winter break. It is provided to COM and 15 other schools for free by a San Francisco-based organization called "AlertU." According to AlertU's website, "AlertU is being provided at no cost to schools due to a generous corporate sponsorship package."

Sgt. Kesecker said this was a great opportunity because other emergency networking systems can cost up to $20,000. Also, COM has "no campus-wide loud speaker system at this point." If there were an emergency, news would have to travel by police officers and word of mouth. The new EMA system is "one additional tool," but "not the end-all solution," said Sgt. Kesecker. The campus police department has recommended that a loud speaker system be included in campus updates under Measure C.

But the important thing right now is to "share the word" about the new EMA system. As of February 5, only 42 people have signed up to receive emergency messages. Teachers and faculty members will be helping to get the word out this month by mentioning the EMA system in their classes.

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