Inside Higher Ed has a post on the federal government sending 180,000 free public alert radios to schools and colleges. But some educators question whether the money can be better spent:
Patricia McGuire, president of Trinity Washington University, said her campus’s security officials had determined the device to be of “very limited utility,” given its redundance with other equipment and sources of emergency information the institution already has.
“We surely appreciate the thought, but if there were a federal grant program to improve security on college campuses, a weather alert radio would be far down the list of our real needs,” McGuire said in an e-mail message. “We’d like to see substantial support for improved rapid communication systems throughout the campus, and with the police and other agencies responsible to work with us on security issues; we’d like to see federal grant support for improved camera and building access systems, improved fire safety systems, electrical generation, and acquisition of equipment that could really help us to protect our campus if there were a serious terrorist act in Washington, e.g., biological or nuclear contamination, destruction of drinking water supplies.
“Seven years after September 11,” she continued, “while we all have improved individual campus emergency plans and many cross-institutional discussions about backing each other up in emergencies, we still seem to have no real governmental plan (federal or local) to work with large institutions should we need to shelter-in-place, deliver emergency supplies to people held on campus, or should we have to evacuate. After all the time and all of the discussions, and all of our private investments in improving campus safety, it’s just curious that we would get a ‘free’ weather radio as a device for disaster planning.”
Filed under: Education, In The News, Waste
