Text Messaging Featured Article

These days, texting has taken on new life as a tool that still keeps people in touch with one another, while also improving the ways we communicate with businesses, organizations, governments, and even household appliances. Text messaging can save people’s lives when used as an emergency alert system. But, because it is an evolving tool, there is always room for improvement.

The shooting on the Purdue University (News - Alert) campus has brought to light one of the issues that can arise from using text message alert systems. During and immediately after the shooting, students and faculty at Purdue reported that they had problems reaching friends and family to tell them they were OK.

Text messages went out to students at 12:12 p.m., notifying them of the shooting. These students then began calling their families and running into network issues. On such student illustrates just how much concern this can cause. A freshman at the school, Sofia Draper, says that she texted her parents when the initial alert went out and said she would call later. But she found that she couldn’t actually make that call until an hour later, because of the network being overloaded.

“Right after the lockdown, I tried to call both my mom and dad, but the phone wouldn't ring," Draper said. "I had to try three or four times for each of them before I could get through. They were pretty shook up and worried that I hadn't called them earlier."

Draper and many others are now saying that this type of situation could be alleviated if parents of students were allowed to sign up to the emergency alert text system as well. This way, more people would be connected through SMS to the alert system, and parents would feel better because they’d be receiving all the same information and updates as their children. While Purdue claims that such a change to its alert system cannot be made immediately, it seems like something that could be done in the near future.

If we’re able to allow people to text a bus they are waiting for, we should be able to add more people onto an automated list that sends out safety alerts.