UW-Platteville is updating and regularly testing the campus emergency alert system. The tests will take place on the first Wednesday of each month at noon. As part of the system, a message will be broadcasted throughout each building on campus and message will be posted on each page on the UW-P Web site.

“During the first test we encountered some technical glitches,” Dan Frommelt, UW-P Webmaster said. “When an emergency message has been sent over the UW-Platteville Web site, I’m able to track the content of the message, who sent the message, the time it was sent and how long it was broadcasted. The first test was broadcasted on the first Wednesday of November and was uploaded on the UW-Platteville Web site for 20 minutes.”

The emergency alert message is inserted at the top of the screen when a student, staff, or faculty member is on the UW-P Web site. Within 15 seconds a message can be customized and then broadcasted on the university Web site.

There are new capabilities that other universities have included in their emergency systems. Text messaging cell phones and sending instant messages are features that are possible to insert into the system. Text messaging students to notify them of emergencies is not feasible to UW-P. The cell phone towers cannot hold enough connects to be able to install a system to text message students when there is an emergency. The cell phone tower in Platteville can only hold 2,000 connections at a time.

“How do we maintain a long term system with students graduating?” said Frommelt. “If students are notified by their cell phone, then each semester the system would have to be updated with current student phone numbers.”

“The emergency alert message sounded muffled in the student center,” said Laurel Skrede, director of Campus Police. “We are working to make it more compatible to match the systems in the other buildings on campus.”

Last April the campus police were aware that there were problems in the system. Once the system was fixed, they decided to do monthly tests in the buildings on campus. Faculty thought it would be benificial to do the tests more often. The campus decided to do the monthly testing so that the alerting sounds become more familiar to people that are on campus.

“In the spring, we will be reevaluating the monthly tests,” said Skrede. “Because of the weather, we don’t want people to think it is just a test when there could actually be a tornado or another type of emergency.”

Because that the system is new, students were unsure of what the testing was for. Even though the broadcasted message was in the buildings on campus, and the message was posted on the UW-P Web site said that it was just a test, many students didn’t know what was being tested.

“I wasn’t sure what the different sounds meant when the emergency system went off,” Peyton Paquin, a business administration major, said. “There are many different tones, which I’m assuming mean different things, but I have no idea what they mean.”