A Sherman Avenue resident woke up at 3 a.m. on Sept.10 with an unknown man standing at the foot of her bed. A few blocks away on Clark Street, Nina Nosavan had no idea, even after the emergency alert e-mail went out 12 hours later.
The Weinberg senior lived off campus in Evanston all summer and never received an emergency alert e-mail from Northwestern, she said.
“I’d heard about some of the events from my roommates, who were in classes,” Nosavan said. “It was kind of scary that all these things were happening and the school didn’t tell me about them.”
The incident on Sherman wasn’t the only incident to merit an alert this summer. Weinberg sophomore James Obremski died in his Evanston apartment July 30, and there was also a case of sexual assault reported Aug. 1, among other incidents.
And Nosavan wasn’t the only person not receiving alerts.
Unless students were registered for Summer Quarter classes or worked for the University this summer, they were not included on the mailing list, University spokesman Al Cubbage said.
“What we do is we send alerts on a campus-specific basis,” he said.
The options, he said, are to send alerts to the Evanston campus, the Chicago campus or both.
Although returning students registered for classes last spring, they aren’t considered “enrolled” until the first day of classes. The idea is that if a student is not on campus, they will probably not be affected by the incidents and therefore don’t need to be bothered with the information.
All students will start getting the emergency alert e-mails again on Tuesday, Cubbage said.
However, new students moved in last Tuesday, Sept. 14. Some upperclassmen were on campus the day before to help new students move in, and more upperclassmen have been living off campus prior to New Student Week.
The campus alert system is a process that begins when either University Police or Evanston Police report the crime to University Relations.
Cubbage then coordinates with the chief of police to make a decision about who is most affected and what kind of alert should be issued.
“(The system) is already set up and the rest of the process is done very quickly,” University Police Cmdr. Ronald Godby said.
Cubbage cited a case last January in which someone reported a man with a gun inside the Rubloff Building on the Chicago campus.
The entire Chicago campus was put on lockdown, and alerts were sent by e-mail to everyone, he said.
Alerts can also be sent by text message or with an outdoor loudspeaker system.
If a text alert is sent out, it goes to everyone affiliated with Northwestern, Cubbage said.
In general, the University does its best not to spam students with unnecessary alerts, Dean of Students Burgwell Howard said.
“If there had been some notices, it is reasonable to assume that the University would have only sent notices to those people they felt would be on campus and impacted by the emergency,” Howard wrote in an e-mail.
“Believe it or not,” he said “we really aren’t interested in spamming students.”
[email protected] Sherman Avenue resident woke up at 3 a.m. on Sept.10 with an unknown man standing at the foot of her bed. A few blocks away on Clark Street, Nina Nosavan had no idea, even after the emergency alert e-mail went out 12 hours later.
The Weinberg senior lived off campus in Evanston all summer and never received an emergency alert e-mail from Northwestern, she said.
“I’d heard about some of the events from my roommates, who were in classes,” Nosavan said. “It was kind of scary that all these things were happening and the school didn’t tell me about them.”
The incident on Sherman wasn’t the only incident to merit an alert this summer. Weinberg sophomore James Obremski died in his Evanston apartment July 30, and there was also a case of sexual assault reported Aug. 1, among other incidents.
And Nosavan wasn’t the only person not receiving alerts.
Unless students were registered for Summer Quarter classes or worked for the University this summer, they were not included on the mailing list, University spokesman Al Cubbage said.
“What we do is we send alerts on a campus-specific basis,” he said.
The options, he said, are to send alerts to the Evanston campus, the Chicago campus or both.
Although returning students registered for classes last spring, they aren’t considered “enrolled” until the first day of classes. The idea is that if a student is not on campus, they will probably not be affected by the incidents and therefore don’t need to be bothered with the information.
All students will start getting the emergency alert e-mails again on Tuesday, Cubbage said.
However, new students moved in last Tuesday, Sept. 14. Some upperclassmen were on campus the day before to help new students move in, and more upperclassmen have been living off campus prior to New Student Week.
The campus alert system is a process that begins when either University Police or Evanston Police report the crime to University Relations.
Cubbage then coordinates with the chief of police to make a decision about who is most affected and what kind of alert should be issued.
“(The system) is already set up and the rest of the process is done very quickly,” University Police Cmdr. Ronald Godby said.
Cubbage cited a case last January in which someone reported a man with a gun inside the Rubloff Building on the Chicago campus.
The entire Chicago campus was put on lockdown, and alerts were sent by e-mail to everyone, he said.
Alerts can also be sent by text message or with an outdoor loudspeaker system.
If a text alert is sent out, it goes to everyone affiliated with Northwestern, Cubbage said.
In general, the University does its best not to spam students with unnecessary alerts, Dean of Students Burgwell Howard said.
“If there had been some notices, it is reasonable to assume that the University would have only sent notices to those people they felt would be on campus and impacted by the emergency,” Howard wrote in an e-mail.
“Believe it or not,” he said “we really aren’t interested in spamming students.”
