Harvard Tests Text Message Alert System

Harvard is testing new emergency notification protocols on 20,000 users today in an assessment of its “MessageMe” system, which experienced functionality problems during the Kirkland House shooting incident last spring.

The program, which was introduced at the University in the wake of the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings, came under scrutiny for failing to deliver messages properly—or at all—during the Harvard shooting. Text messages were cut short and about two percent of the 14,000 subscribers in the program were not reached during the incident, University spokesman Kevin Galvin wrote in an e-mailed statement at the time.

University Information Systems, which oversees the program, has since trained representatives from the Harvard News Office and Harvard University Police Department to avoid truncation problems. Standard SMS messages have a limit of 160 characters.

“Folks go in, they use the system, they practice sending a message, sending a message to a specific group,” said Susan Walsh, the acting Chief Information Officer at the University Information Systems. She added that students who choose not to receive emergency text messages can now also be alerted to emergencies through e-mails, Twitter, Facebook “fan pages,” and RSS feeds.

“We’re trying to reach out with as many different modes of communication as we can,” said Walsh. “We’re going for saturation.”

Undergraduate Council member George Hayward ’11 noted that the delivery of some text messages during the Kirkland shooting had been delayed—possibly because alerts had been sent to all subscribers at once, overloading the system.

Hayward cited the failed messages deliveries in his lobbying efforts to improve cell phone reception in the Quad, and he noted that the “MessageMe” program is explicitly cited by the University in its reaccreditation report as one reason why Harvard is a “particularly secure school.”

—Staff writer Laura G. Mirviss can be reached at lmirviss@fas.harvard.edu.