Editor,
After I woke up at 7 a.m. on Tuesday, I padded into the living room of my parents' home, turned on the TV to a local news program and turned on my laptop and logged on to Unm.edu. Both informed me that the University was on a two-hour delay.
Celebrating slightly, I took a shower and made some coffee. Around 8 a.m., friends who had neither television nor Internet called me asking about a delay or school closure. They had, as have I, signed up for TextMe UNM, the University's emergency notification system.
The service offers automatic safety and weather alerts via mobile phone and several Internet options.
While the service does note that it "does not warrant the successful delivery of each message to each individual recipient," which I understand, as technology is not flawless, it seems suspicious to me that not one person I spoke with who had signed up for the service had received an alert from UNM with regard to the two-hour delay.
Also, no one I spoke with remembers receiving a text message about the bomb squad being called in last semester when there was a possible armed man on campus.
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In case someone mentions that my friends and I may have been disenrolled after the year-long period, let me mention that the TextMe UNM system states that it will send "a reminder to re-enroll," which no one seems to have received either.
I understand this is a service UNM does not have to provide, and I am thankful that it chooses to do so, but if UNM is going to offer this service that people are going to rely on for their safety, the University needs to provide the "fast, convenient, real-time message alerts" it promises.
Elizabeth Derby
UNM student
