Denny Carter of eCampus News (@ecampusnews) reports insightfully on IntelliGuard Systems and its pager alert system (requires login, but available on bugmenot), which it claims reaches students in 20 seconds flat by using a private wireless system.

Carter did his homework for the piece, and he addresses all the appropriate aspects of the larger context surrounding this story: criticism (like this [PDF]) schools have received for failing to reach students fast enough in emergency situations, questioning whether students will actually inconvenience themselves to carry the RavenAlert system (size of a memory stick) and the cost of $70 students will have to assume for the device.

But a larger social media question looms in the assumption that emergency information always (or often) still operates on a top-down trajectory.

I’ve got no problem with devices that help administrators reach the larger college or university community in the event of an emergency. In fact, such a channel of communication is essential and worth investing in. But what about all the times that the awareness of an emergency starts on the student level?

Are universities doing enough to monitor Facebook and the appropriate Twitter hashtags to flag potentially dangerous situations as early as possible? Are students and staff meeting sufficiently in social media spaces so they can exchange information about campus safety issues?

Before charging students an extra $70, hopefully universities and colleges are making sure they are using the free tools of social media to make sure there is a two-way street in this regard.

Photo credit: Flickr/SvobodaIT