University of Alabama shooting highlights communication problem

By Joseph L. Giacalone, The Klaxon

Another tragic university shooting tests another failure of the communication alert system. Are we ever going to get this right?

At first glance, the shooting Friday at the University of Alabama in Huntsville does not appear to be the work of a mass murderer, but that of a college professor. However, it could have been a lot worse.

Many students that were in lockdown at the University of Alabama in Huntsville were tweeting on Twitter that they did not get a notification of the university’s alert system. Why? The chief of the university police stated that the people in charge of making the notification were responding to the emergency. That’s not good enough.
Schools and companies across the world have experienced a rash of violence over the last three years and the statistics are trending upwards.

Security directors have scrambled to identify a way to warn students, tenants, customers, etc., about the potential danger as it’s occurring.

Security budgets are tight enough without having to implement an expensive notification system. Any security consultant worth their weight in gold has a solution that is the best, is time tested and is the most cost effective.

There may be a simple solution, however, to the communication breakdown. This “silver bullet” is social media, such as Twitter and Facebook.

Students in Alabama were using it to report on matters as they happened—and emergency managers must embrace these new technologies. It seems the best way to fix the communication problem is to ask the students.

Such technology makes an emergency manager’s job more productive—and could have assisted law enforcement and security personnel in Huntsville.

Emergency action plans are required by law, and many, if not all states, require part of that plan to cover workplace violence, including colleges and universities.

It’s understandable in these situations, such as the Alabama shooting, that nerves set in before action, but hesitating on the latter costs lives.

One of the first steps in designing a workplace violence plan (even at the university or college level) should be to create an instant notification system. Phone trees take too long, e-mails might not be read in time, but social media—as seen during the 2009 Iran elections and now among students in Huntsville—is the dominant notification system.

Let’s hope if there’s ever a “next time,” authorities’ alerts keep up to speed, er, tweet.