Just saw an interesting article about some national legislation that has recently been presented on the floor about emergency notification at colleges & universities.
http://www.campussafetymagazine.com/News/?newsID=1080
U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) introduced legislation on April 26 to strengthen the safety and security of college and university campuses. The Campus Law Enforcement Emergency Response Act of 2007 will ensure that all colleges and universities develop emergency response procedures and campus notification systems, and test them on at least an annual basis.
The legislation would require colleges and universities to do the following:
- Develop and distribute policies for responding to law enforcement emergencies, including procedures for notifying students and employees about such emergencies. The term "law enforcement emergency" would include situations that occur on a college campus, that involve a law enforcement response and that pose a potential threat of continuing danger;
- Report on statistics concerning the occurrence of such emergencies;
- Test their law enforcement emergency response procedures at least annually; and
- Provide notification to the campus community no later than 30 minutes after the discovery of a law enforcement emergency situation.
What is extremely interesting about this legislation is the time limit they have on the amount of time the school has to send out the alert after an incident. Actually getting a mass alert out is the easy part. Emergency alert systems are a dime a dozen. MissionMode does it as well as anyone via voice and text to phone, fax, email and SMS.
However, the hard part noted here is complying with that 30-minute window. How will you get a hold of all the decision makers, get them up to speed, and quickly make the decision of what exactly you are going to say in that alert? That is the key, and the MissionMode crisis management system is exactly what you need to accomplish it with an online command center where team members can access emergency response plans, get up to speed quickly on the current situation, and collaborate on the action to take.
Learn more by visiting MissionMode at http://www.missionmode.com/products/index.htm. Call +1 877.833.7763 to schedule a demo today!
Comments