A recent article in University Affairs outlines in some of the horrible incidents that have happened at university campuses in Canada and the US.  Suffice to say I shudder whenever I hear a siren near campus.

But where there is fear there is opportunity. The market is swelling with vendors offering technology solutions to improve crisis communications. That said I don’t believe there is a single solution available to get the message out to students, faculty and staff fast enough. It’s important to note that the cell network at Dawson College crashed on the day of their incident. Sending email to thousands of people could take hours to process only to get marked as spam! PA solutions also have limitations.

TRU is taking steps to create a coordinated response to crisis management on our campuses that will leverage a collection of technologies to communicate urgent messages under the control of a integrated incident response team comprised of TRU and local authorities. We all take pride in the safety of our school and with new approaches, we will be ready to react to the unthinkable.