Emergency text message difficult to translate

Yesterday morning, students signed up for FlashAlerts, Kent State’s emergency text messaging service, got the following message:

“WEATHER ALERT ??? CLASSES CANCELED

Starting at noon for ELIV & TUSC.

Starting at 12:30 p.m. for Kent. See www.kent.edu/advisory.”

Scott Rainone, assistant director of university media relations, said the university may re-evaluate how the system is used.

“We had some people that said one should be sent out for every campus,” he said.

The service, through Rave Wireless, is not currently set up to send different messages to different campuses.

“We hope that the company will help us change it,” Rainone said.

The message was abbreviated to save character space, but Rainone said that may have made it unclear.

He said the FlashAlert is sent out first, then the message is placed on Kent State’s Web site and finally a mass e-mail is sent.

Students were only notified by e-mail and not through FlashAlerts about Friday’s robbery because it was more of an informational message and not breaking news, Rainone said.

So far, about 6,000 students at all eight campuses have signed up for the service.

– Kiera Manion-Fischer