KEENE, N.H. (AP) – Keene State College has become the latest New Hampshire school to upgrade its emergency notification system in an effort to keep students safe.

Unveiled last month, the new system goes beyond the e-mail and Internet postings used in the past to alert students about potential dangers. Now, students can sign up for alerts by e-mail, phone or text message.

“No system is going to be 100 percent, but the idea is to approach emergency communications from as many angles as possible,” said Amanda Warman, director of campus safety.

That sentiment was echoed by Christopher Williams, a spokesman for Plymouth State University, which adopted a similar alert system late last summer. Tragic shootings at Virginia Tech last year and at Northern Illinois University last week made officials take a longer look at the system, he said.

Warman said she first learned about new emergency notification technology at a conference years ago and felt it was something the college should investigation. But it took the publicity over the recent shootings to get more people convinced that implementing a new system was the right thing to do.

The University of New Hampshire also has instituted e-mail and text message alerts, and urged students who hadn’t registered for the alerts to do so after Thursday’s shooting in Illinois.


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