The pings arrive at all hours of the day. The latest email sounded off at 3:11 a.m. A text message trailed behind a minute later.
They cover thunderstorms, tests, and warnings that, on at least two occasions this summer, posed "no immediate health or safety threat."
But the emails and text alerts that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's department of public safety sends to Lindsey R. Faraone’s iPhone all have one thing in common.
They're not read.
"It's kind of how it is with these messages," Ms. Faraone says. "The idea behind them is that they're for emergencies, but because a lot of the times it’s about 'It could rain this afternoon or it might storm later,' a lot of the time I just don't care to read them."
Ms. Faraone's annoyance with the university's emergency-alert system is shared by many college students, who gripe about not only the subject of the texts and emails but also their frequency.
Campus officials and people who sell those systems know they have a problem. "You don't want the whole car-alarm syndrome. When you hear a car alarm, you just walk on by because you hear them all day," says Ara Bagdasarian, chief executive officer of E2 Campus by Omnilert, an emergency-alert system used by about 850 colleges across the nation.
Scott G. Burnotes, director of emergency management at the University of Miami, says he can understand the students' frustrations, but he's quick to note the university's larger concerns.
"We cannot just rely on one type of technology. We can't just rely on text. There are technology failures," Mr. Burnotes says. "To get people to take action, individuals need to hear something from at least three different sources. That's why we hit them with the text. That's why we hit them with the call. That's why we hit them with the email."
In 2013, according to Mr. Burnotes, the University of Miami sent 17 emergency messages to students. Seventeen hardly seems like a bothersome number. But each of those messages was sent three ways, by text, by email, and by phone call, adding up to 51 contacts.
Read more at The Chronicle of Higher Education: http://chronicle.com/article/Too-Many-Campus-Alerts-/148897