Monday November 22, 2010 year: 130 No. 158 the student voice of
The Ohio State University
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thelantern Did alert system succeed?
sports
After bomb threat, 7 percent of alert subscribers didn’t get the message Kelsey Buller Oller projects reporter buller.10@osu.edu
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Pryor rescues Buckeyes
QB Terrelle Pryor rallied his team to a fourth-quarter comeback with a 14-yard scramble for first down.
arts & life
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Seeing Harry Potter with Gee OSU President E. Gordon Gee joined 140 students Saturday for a free showing of the new Potter film.
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Beat U of M calendar of events
Ohio State officials said they can’t explain why more than 7 percent of students enrolled in the university’s emergency notification system didn’t get the message last Tuesday when a bomb scare shut down some of the Columbus campus. But experts said that even if 10 percent of the 32,000 subscribers in the Buckeye Alert system were left out of the loop, it would be considered a success. “I don’t think you’ll ever have 100 percent communication, even if you have a skywriter go across the sky with a banner,” said Ara Bagdasarian, CEO of Omnilert, a leading emergency notification provider that works with more than 800 colleges and universities. OSU has a contract with Twenty First Century Communications, a company that acts as the middleman between the university and cell phone carriers when OSU officials need to send updates about emergencies on campus. Last Tuesday, when an anonymous bomb threat led authorities to shut down four campus buildings, OSU officials sent an alert to the company, which passed it along to cell phone carriers within nine minutes, said Bob Armstrong, director of Emergency Management and Fire Prevention at OSU. However, the time it takes to reach individual cell phones depends on the how fast the carrier can deliver messages to customers, said John Rhind, director of marketing and communications for Columbus-based Twenty First Century Communications. When it comes to campus security alerts, there are no official guidelines for colleges and universities. Most schools rely on continued discussions to update their systems, and many have decided that there is no one perfect way to reach students. “One of our biggest missions is to educate schools on realizing the importance of a multimodal approach,” said Bagdasarian, who launched e2campus.org, a website where school officials can
AUSTIN OWENS / Lantern photographer
Students gather outside McPherson Laboratory on Tuesday. The Franklin County Bomb Squad as well as several other OSU and local law enforcement agencies were on campus after the FBI received a bomb threat. share their emergency notifications policies. “Just a phone call, just an e-mail, just a text message is not enough. You need to notify students through as many means possible.” OSU has a multi-pronged notification system, and officials decide on a case-by-case basis which methods to employ. “These include, but are not limited to, text messaging, e-mail, voice mail, cable TV scroll, cable TV audio interruption, outdoor warning system and others,” Armstrong said.
Despite some complaints about the university’s alert system — which sends messages only to subscribers but will switch to a new system in 2011 that enrolls all students — officials at other universities said they have similar success rates reaching students with their systems. “I feel 100 percent is almost impossible to reach, and on any planning scenario where you try to hit 100 percent, you fail, so you try to do what you can,”
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Officials: Buckeye Alert system to become opt-out by 2011 justin conley Lantern reporter conley.325@osu.edu Just days after a bomb threat shut down much of Ohio State’s Columbus campus and prompted an FBI investigation, university officials said they were finalizing plans for a revamped emergency notification system that would automatically enroll all students beginning in 2011 unless they opt out. Officials said Friday that the decision is not a reaction to the bomb threat and the timing is coincidence. However, the change came amid complaints from students and families who said they were enrolled in the subscriber-only emergency notification system known as Buckeye Alert — which sends emergency updates through text message,
e-mail or phone call — but never got the message about the bomb threat Tuesday. “We’ve been working on (the change) for about … two and a half years now, and we’re getting very, very close to getting that finalized,” said Bob Armstrong, director of Emergency Management and Fire Prevention at OSU. Once the system is converted to automatic enrollment, all students attending the main and regional OSU campuses will be enrolled to receive alerts; they will be able to opt out of the system. Armstrong said officials haven’t decided when staff and faculty would be enrolled in the system. The switch comes as OSU renegotiates its contract with Twenty First Century Communications, the provider of the emergency alert system. The new contract is set to be finished in December and will change the way OSU pays for the Buckeye Alert System.
Armstrong said that OSU might pay a little more for the contract switch. Under the new contract, the university will pay $1.25 per person enrolled in the system each year. Under the contract in place now, OSU pays about $20,000 a year, in addition to $7,000 to $10,000 each time the system is activated, Armstrong said. He still encourages students to enroll in the Buckeye Alert system before the opt-in system is converted to an opt-out program. “Don’t wait until it becomes an opt-out (system),” Armstrong said. “Sign up now.” The bomb scare last week encouraged many to do just that. Within 24 hours of the threat, more than 12,000 students subscribed to receive Buckeye Alerts, adding to the 15,000 students
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2A Stores see spike in Four Loko sales jami jurich Senior Lantern reporter jurich.4@osu.edu
sports
Soccer teams advance in NCAA
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Four Loko is flying off store shelves almost as fast as the vendors can put it there, according to store managers at some campus-area stores. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration announced that Four Loko and other alcoholic energy drinks are unsafe, and Phusion Projects, the maker of Four Loko, said the company would remove the stimulants caffeine, taurine and guarana from their product. Since then, students have been rushing to get their hands on what’s left of the caffeinated product created by three Ohio State alumni. “We’re seeing a spike in sales,” said Daniel Leppla, the manager of United Dairy Farmers at High Street and Frambes Avenue. Renzo Ganvini, the store manager at Campus Corner, located at East 16th Avenue and High Street, said his store has seen a surge in sales but doesn’t think the store will sell out any time soon. “We have a big long row of Four Loko, actually,” Ganvini said, “over 200 cases left.” Each case of Four Loko contains 12 cans. Ganvini said that, before the FDA announcement, students typically came bought one or two cans at a time, but now they are buying them by the case. One student at Campus Corner bought 16 cases — two cases each of the eight flavors — Ganvini said. Though some campus liquor stores, including Tobacco International on East 13th Avenue, have raised the prices on Four Loko, Ganvini said his store is still selling the product for $2.49 per can. Brett Aukerman, the assistant manager of PJ’s Grill on East Frambes Avenue, said people have been buying the drinks by the case at his store as well. He said confusion about the announcement has people scrambling.
Cody Cousino / Lantern photographer
Joey Haplin, a fifth-year in history, stocks up on Four Loko at the Buckeye Express Convenience Store on Northwood Avenue and High Street on Wednesday. “It’s been a huge increase in sales actually,” Aukerman said. “Everyone thinks they’re being banned completely.” Aukerman said he thinks many students are under the impression that Four Loko is being banned outright by the FDA. However, the FDA is calling for a safer version of the product. “FDA is aware that on (Tuesday), Phusion
Projects, LLC, the maker of Four Loko, announced its intention to remove caffeine and other stimulants from its drink,” according to a statement from the FDA released Wednesday. “FDA intends to work with Phusion Projects, LLC, and other manufacturers to assure their products will meet safety standards.”
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