Colleges now on alert in low-tech ways, too

— -- After the shootings last year at Virginia Tech and a February rampage at Northern Illinois University, colleges and universities nationwide are installing high-tech alert systems that beam emergency e-mails and voice messages to thousands of cellphones, pagers and personal computers to alert staff and students both on and off campus.

But in a bid to cover all their bases, they're also investing in decidedly more low-tech, Cold War-era alert tools: loudspeakers and sirens.

One Connecticut manufacturer says it has installed at least 100 loudspeaker-and-siren devices on college campuses — more than half of those since the April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech shootings, in which a gunman killed 32 people and then himself. Another manufacturer, based in Illinois, says business has grown nearly fivefold since last April.

The reason? While cellphones, BlackBerrys and personal computers are ubiquitous, not everyone keeps them on hand all the time.

"If you put all your eggs in one basket, the message may not reach some people," says Christopher Blake of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators.

Among the schools investing in new siren systems: Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., where officials tested theirs for the first time late in March. It uses a short, pre-recorded message sandwiched between two siren blasts, but the sky's the limit, says university spokesman Alan Cubbage. "We could make it sound like Westminster Abbey if we wanted it to."

Many colleges simply feed loudspeaker warnings through existing "blue light" emergency telephone kiosks located throughout campus. At the University of Vermont, police chief Gary Margolis says he expects a siren-and-loudspeaker system to be up and running by summer on the 645-acre campus. He already uses e-mail warnings for emergencies. But like other safety experts, he says e-mail can't reach people on athletic fields or in classes in which professors demand that students stow cellphones.