Wednesday’s campus siren test
was supposed to familiarize the VCU
community with “emergency situation”
procedures. We’re familiar with
the sirens, all right, but
only because they sounded a lot like
fire trucks.
Between the never-ending
e-mails and a whole lot of
public relations brouhaha,I know
I’m not the only one
thinking, “That’s it?”
The whole thing didn’t
seem too effective or organized. Neither
did the text message alerts. Despite all
the e-mails advising us to register our
phones, quite a few of us haven’t done
that, including me. What’s more, some
of the responsible folks who already
signed up for their text messages said
they didn’t get them, or they got them
10 minutes late.
OK, so the operative word here is
“test.” But after all the PR that went into
emergency preparedness, was it wrong
of us to expect more?
Anyone passing by or sitting around
the Monroe Park Campus saw the many
video news crews assembled by the James
Branch Cabell Library. Was it a slow
news day in Richmond? And where were
John M. Bennett’s giant scissors? It sure
looked like a ribbon-cutting ceremony
for Bennett, VCU’s “emergency incident
commander” and senior vice president
for Finance and Administration.
Here’s the thing, though: The sirens
were supposed to be audible for up to
a mile away, and they rotated three
times a minute. Some students didn’t
hear the alarms at the Cabell Library,
the University Student Commons, on
Franklin Street or on Grace Street. If
that was the case, then what about the
students and faculty farther away on
Broad and Bowe streets?
The sirens did not sound as loudly
or as long as we’d expected. After all,
we only expected to hear them because
of the 5 million e-mails in our inboxes,
which begs the question: What if you’re
somewhere without e-mail? There are
way too many “what-ifs” regarding cell
phones: What if you don’t have one?
What if you turn yours off during class?
What if you don’t get text messages on
your service plan?
In the wake of the Virginia Tech
tragedy this past April, it’s understandable
that VCU wants to publicize its
emergency plan. There’s no such thing
as the perfect plan, but how well-developed
is the one we’ve got? Going to
the nearest university building during
emergency situations might not be the
best thing to do if the problem is in that
building. Maybe VCU should impose a
new policy that requires
students and faculty to swipe
their ID cards not just into
student housing, but into all
university buildings. We are
an urban campus, and most
of our buildings are easily
accessible.
The next siren or emergency
alert test should not
be expected. If it were a real
surprise, we might have a
better idea whether our
plan really is working. There
shouldn’t be as much publicity
or e-mail notifications as
there were this time.
It’s not like we read every
single message. A flurry
of notices promoting the
same information over and
over again might be just as
ineffective as, say, the siren
test.