Editorial

Despite the overwhelming praise for NOVA Alert after the shooting in Main Lot on Saturday night, there were still some minor glitches in its trial run.

Upon notification by several students’ 911 calls, Public Safety communicated the danger to the subscribers of Nova Alert within nine minutes – an impressive number considering this was the first time the University used the system in a real emergency.

Subsequent updates were released throughout the night until approximately 7 a.m. when it was deemed safe for students to “go about [their] normal business.”

Despite this, hundreds of text messages were not sent out. Some students only received one or two instead of all three.

Others said that their messages went to junk e-mail boxes instead of their primary inboxes.

Some students who have Verizon did not receive any of the texts because of the 2,500 outgoing-message limit.

Only nine of the 25 residence halls on campus were placed on lockdown. These included the ones closest to Main Lot: the Quad, Moriarty Hall and all of South Campus.

Public Safety reported that not enough officers were on campus to accommodate every residence hall.

However, there were students who reported that extra officers were seen in buildings that were not on lockdown. Also, the end of the first night shift finished around the time of the incident, so others were on their way, supposedly eliminating the need for more security.

All of these errors leave room for potentially detrimental consequences for the University. In light of the shooting last December on our campus and the more serious one at Virginia Tech in March, we must not neglect the fact that one student who does not receive that text or read that crucial e-mail could be one injured or even killed.

In these kinds of situations, it really is a matter of life and death.

However, the University response to this shooting far exceeds the one in December when hundreds of students were notified by e-mails that were not only late but also included misleading information.

Public Safety had only conducted one comprehensive test of NOVA Alert before Saturday. The school is also making necessary strides with Verizon so that the server is able to send all of the messages at once rather than intermittently.

More students must sign up for NOVA Alert so that there is an incentive to improve the system. If the entire school subscribes, there will be a better chance that every student will receive notification or at least someone near them will.

If the school is seeking perfection in the system, we’re not there yet, but we’re on our way.