Alert! Alert!

UMBC police are using a false alarm as an argument that we should sign up for text alerts. I guess the argument is "See, we sent out another useless alert. Don't you want to be sure you don't miss any of this irrelevant information?"

This country has been running scared since 9/11/01, and the situation a couple years ago in Blacksburg didn't help. But enough is enough, and "e2campus" is too much. We're expected to sign up to be alerted for events of near-zero probability, so almost any e2campus alert will be a waste of time.

> September 23, 2010
>
> To: The UMBC Community
>
> Fr: Mark Sparks, Chief of Police
>
> Re: False Report of a Shooting on Campus
>
> This morning, Baltimore County Police responded to a 911
> call of a possible shooting in front of the Retriever
> Activities Center (RAC) within about two minutes of
> receiving the call. Both police agencies did a thorough
> search of the RAC and surrounding area and found no evidence
> of a shooting through the search or citizen interviews on
> the scene. The call was apparently unfounded, and is being
> treated as a False Report call by the Baltimore County
> Police Department.
>
> An e2Campus text alert was sent out once the UMBC officers
> developed enough information about the call, to tell the
> campus the nature of the call and that it was unfounded.
>
> Members of the campus community are encouraged to sign up
> for e2campus, an emergency alert text-messaging system that
> will permit the University to notify subscribers to any
> campus-related emergency (such as potential campus safety
> hazards or campus closures due to weather). It is compatible
> with mobile phones, Blackberries, "smart phones," satellite
> phones, e-mail, wireless PDAs and pagers. Normal
> text-messaging rates apply. There are no additional
> charges. Sign up for this important service today at
> http://my.umbc.edu/go/alerts.