The University of Idaho Argonaut

When the University of Idaho decided to cancel school two weeks ago, it was the right decision. But there was a major problem with the way they told students not to bother coming to class.
The first e-mail went out at 8:45 a.m. on Jan. 31, the first day the university was closed. Many classes start at 8:30, and a few start even earlier. How many students doggedly made their way to campus, in spite of the half-foot of snow covering the streets? How many risked serious injury or worse because the university hadn’t closed down in a decade, and no notification otherwise from the administration had come out?

One student would be too many.
This region was in an official state of emergency, and all of the local school districts were shut down by 6 a.m. — radio and TV broadcasts disseminated the news. Yet the roughly 10,000 students who could have been on their way to the Moscow campus were in the dark about whether they should start digging until almost 9.

The administration did the best it could with what it had. We’re not faulting them for doing what they did. But the recent cancellations need to serve as a wake-up call that our emergency notification system needs some work.

Washington State University’s system, which was just finished last semester, uses e-mail, text messages and voice mails to communicate with students in the event of an emergency.
The first full test of the system under real-life conditions was during the recent storm — notification of the closure was sent out at 9:13 a.m., but it took nearly an hour to reach the database of contacts. The second notification, sent out at 5:09 p.m. Thursday confirming the Friday closure, reached people faster.

The WSU system glitch is an example of the administration having its head in the right place, but the execution of the plan needing some tweaks.
With last spring’s shooting at Virginia Tech, emergency notification at universities was brought front and center. The recent storm was nowhere near the VT shooting in terms of emergency, but if we can’t get it right on the little things, how are we going to deal if something big happens?

— CW