During a March 12 meeting of AMS Council, AMS Managing Director Justin Lieu said the student union plans to unveil an emergency alert system soon. Once complete, this system would allow UBC to send urgent notifications to students and staff if a dangerous situation were to develop in the Nest or adjacent buildings.
“In simplest terms, it’s a mass text message system,” said AMS Senior Communications and Marketing Manager Eric Lowe to The Ubyssey.
“These are urgent alerts, [and] something that we would send one, two times a year.”
Lowe added that these notifications will be formatted based on a set of templates so messages don't need to be written entirely during emergency events, and initial messages will prioritize only the information necessary to direct recipients to safety; an alert might tell students and staff to evacuate a building and then divulge more once the proper emergency services have been contacted.
This announcement comes around five months after the Nest was evacuated under threat of a possible gunman in the building — it was eventually revealed the suspect held only a water gun. However, despite the severity of the initial potential threat, only an auditory evacuation announcement was made, which many students were unable to hear.
Lowe said there was “no real reason” why the AMS chose to implement this system now, and that the AMS has been considering such a system for years. He added that the AMS has already completed test runs of the system and plans to release it to Nest staff and volunteers by next month.
According to Lowe, this staggered roll-out (which introduces the system to staff first) is to make absolutely sure the system works before getting students on board.
The alert system will be optional for both students and staff, and Lowe said the AMS would advertise the eventual option to opt-in to the alert system to students through social media.
“Some people may not be comfortable sharing their … personal numbers, and so they may not want to sign up,” said Lowe. “And we’re not going to force anyone to do that.”
But anyone who decides not to opt-in to the alert system — or is unaware of it — could potentially miss vital information in the event of an emergency. Visitors at UBC could likewise be left in the dark. In such a situation, Lowe hopes word-of-mouth would help notify these individuals.
“Maybe everyone in the building isn’t signed up for [the system] and won’t get alerts, but someone beside them might,” said Lowe. “The hope is that someone beside them will say, ‘Oh, [we’ve] got to get out of the building.’”
When asked if he had any other comments he wished to share, Lowe stressed the tool’s potential importance.
“We're not advertising specials at Blue Chip. It really is for emergency, high-priority situations,” he said. “So if you are coming to the Nest quite frequently … then please sign up."
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