This editorial represents the opinion of The Bona Venture staff.
Apparently, flooding occurred earlier this week.
The Office of Communications dispensed information of a county-wide severe storm warning at 1:50 p.m. Monday. The message said the storm was “capable of producing large, damaging hail” and advised students to “seek shelter inside a sturdy structure” and to “stay away from windows.”
Furthermore, campus officials advised those parked near the storm drain behind Shay-Loughlen Halls to move their vehicles.
All of this sounds extremely helpful, but bear in mind the notification was sent to the student body at 1:50 p.m. The warning, for the severe take-shelter-damaging-hail-avoid-windows storm, was set to expire at 2 p.m.
Yes, a 10-minute storm warning. Sent over the emailed Notice Board notifications, by the way, so most of the people who actually received the warning were those who happened to check their email during that 10-minute period.
Those who had the foresight to sign up for the e2Campus system were notified of the impending storm only slightly sooner, at 1:38 p.m.
While the text alert was dispersed a bit earlier, it still only came 22 minutes before the storm was due to end. Frankly, this does not seem nearly soon enough, especially considering many of the students whose cars may have needed relocation were very likely stuck in class by that time. How likely is it, really, that the storm descended that swiftly?
Admittedly, Western New York weather is unpredictable at best, so it is very possible that Bona’s was blindsided. That’s fair. However, the 12-minute difference between the two warnings is questionable. Why was the e2Campus system so much quicker than the Notice Board email?
For what is essentially the same message (the e2Campus version was written in text-talk) the time lapse seems way too long, even considering the minuscule possibility that the world’s slowest typist on record translated the text into the email.
Logically, there are really only two possibilities: either the people in charge of the Notice Board didn’t distribute the alert as quickly as the student body would have probably preferred, or the program that disperses the Notice Board messages has a delayed-release system.
Hopefully, it was not the former of the two possibilities, and the university was prompt and efficient in reporting the storm warning to its students.
Yet, if that’s the case, it means that the Notice Board system works on a delay, which could easily be a huge problem in a more severe emergency.
What if the next storm is even worse or – God forbid – campus is forced into a lockdown due to a shooter or other unstable individual? In dangerous situations, time is an exceedingly valuable commodity that must not be wasted as a vital message sits stagnantly in cyberspace.
Regardless of the reason why the recent storm warning was so erratic, Monday’s snafu can be viewed as a test run of the emergency alert system. This test was a failed one, but hopefully the university can use the results of this failure to remedy the problems present in their current system.
Hopefully.
