Ball State University's Crisis Management Team will consider sending out a mass e-mail to students in the event of another ice storm or related crisis event, the executive director of University Communications said.
After participating in a formal debriefing Thursday morning, Heather Shupp said she wished the university had sent out an e-mail to students updating them on the state of the university during the Jan. 5 ice storm that struck east central Indiana and left tens of thousands in the area without power.
"At the time, the media coverage was fairly extensive and we knew people were looking at the Web site," Shupp said. "It just didn't occur to us as the most direct method of communication at the time. But really, communication is going in all directions at once as much as you can."
While e-mail is not a fail-safe guarantee, it is certainly another way to effectively deliver information to the student body, Shupp said.
Kevin Kenyon, associate vice president for Facilities Planning and Management, said the crisis team further discussed opportunities to improve communication within the team and with other university administrators, faculty, staff and members of the community.
On Wednesday, Facilities Planning and Management met to discuss the need to get feedback from other employees in the sports, housing and dining facilities regarding the generators' performance during the ice storm. Facilities Planning and Management will create an action plan to cope with technical challenges in the next few weeks, Kenyon said.
He said the crisis team has also discussed planning live drills to test its communication system but has not made formal plans to do so yet.
"Anytime, you can find something to improve on or wish you had done differently; I'm sure anyone can list things they wish they could have done differently - I know I can - but overall we did pretty well," Kenyon said. "It showed the level of preparation we gave this over the the last several years was worth it."
Randy Hyman said the crisis team of nine members will continue to attend to its protocol and remain prepared for future storms.
"We will be prepared to come together at a moment's notice as the situation with the weather unfolds that would require us to be responsive in dealing with the challenge students might be facing," Hyman said.
He said he was especially pleased with the university's willingness to provide shelter for a large number of Ball State faculty, students and staff in Ball Gym last weekend and early this week.
The team's cooperation with President Jo Ann Gora to determine whether to open spring semester classes earlier this week was also successful, Hyman said.
"I think the university is well prepared to be responsive to any additional weather crises we might encounter," he said.
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