This editorial reflects the views of the Ball State Daily News, but not the views of its Unified Media affiliates.
When a student is stabbed during an armed robbery on campus, sending just an email doesn’t cut it.
Emergency notifications have been an ongoing issue with students at Ball State. University administrators and students seem to feel differently about the method of releasing information.
Typically, in emergency situations, a notification is sent through email, and for students who sign up for the alert, as a text message. We doubt that many students were checking their emails at 1 a.m. Sunday when Joan Todd, executive director of public relations, sent a notification. The emails are generally sent by a clearly marked Public Safety Notices account.
The same early morning, IU had a similar situation. A man slashed a student in the back with a knife during a dispute around 3:30 a.m. at Tulip Tree Apartments near campus.
IU did more than just send an email. It put campus on a shutdown until the dispute was resolved around 7:30 a.m. Students were called to be informed that police were investigating. Many students had at least some peace of mind.
Some Ball State students who saw the email from Todd just shrugged off the dangerous situation, just as the university seemed to do.
Tony Proudfoot, associate vice president for marketing and communications, said you can’t compare a situation at one university to another. Though the situations were different, the responses also were too dissimilar for our comfort.
Some university officials, such as the associate vice president of student affairs, have said students should know how to take basic safety precautions themselves.
“I’m kind of floored by that kind of response,” Alan Hargrave said about students who have said they would like more safety advice in these situations.
“That is what I would do with a 6-year-old.”
We aren’t saying that the university is responding to the incidents inappropriately — based on the current way students receive emergency notifications, we don’t even know what steps of response are.
What we are saying is that assuming students will benefit from the minimum amount of information that doesn’t even reach all students is absurd. Some IU students complained about the emergency phone calls last night being too much, but at least they knew what was going during the situation. They were more aware than Ball State students.
Gene Burton, director of public safety, said after an incident of a reported gunman on campus in March that the University Police Department reviews how officers handle emergency situations to see if certain areas need to be worked on. After each questionable incident, Todd said the emergency alert system works just fine.
Todd and other university administrators need to think the same way about emergency notifications as other universities do. We are afraid to see what happens if they don’t.
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