On October 29th GW introduced GW Alert, a new emergency communications system, to its campus community. The new system is a downloaded program that, when activated, sends a “crawler” across the bottom of a computer screen – informing the user about possible emergencies at the university.The program, provided by ActiveAccess, has a few flaws, which are interesting for a college campus. First, the program works only on Windows operating systems. Because of this, students using Macs will not be privy to this new technology. Second, only computers that are turned on can receive emergency information. This is different from the Alert DC system, which sends a text message to the user as well as an email. Compared to Alert DC, GW Alert appears to be slightly ineffective in case of emergency.
Alert DC lets the user choose what and when to be alerted about, according to what issues the user cares about. But some students aren’t entirely impressed. Blade Smith, a GW student who recently downloaded the system noted, “I’m annoyed that I had to download something to get it and I’m also annoyed that it is only going to my computer. I don’t even know if it works because I don’t know if I have to be connected to the internet or not to get these alerts. My roommates are also mad they can’t download it because they use Macs.”
The university has yet to say if it will release a version that is Mac compatible.
- Taylor Barnes
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