Laura Bakopolus, ’13, Staff Writer
Beepbeepbeep: Your phone buzzes, so you look down to see who texted you. It’s an unknown number, but you open the text in case it’s something important (and because your curiosity often gets the best of you). You expect it to be spam, or maybe that cute stranger from the gym asking you out to a romantic dinner at Sparky’s Place.
Instead, the text tells you that there’s a power outage in Cushing, and classes the next day will be canceled. This is pretty much the best news you could have gotten — even better than the date with the gym rat — because now you have an extra few days to study for that much-dreaded test on every art historian who ever lived.
Now imagine you didn’t get that text. You stay up all night cramming your brain with incomprehensible names and dates, even though your roommate wants to pregame for the Super Bowl a week early. The following morning, you trek all the way across campus to Cushing Hall, the whole way muttering to yourself that 8 a.m. classes should be outlawed. You arrive to find out that class is canceled. Waking up in time for this 8 a.m. course was your biggest accomplishment of 2012 (and something you can now check off your list of New Year’s resolutions). Don’t you wish you had known about it sooner?
That’s what Rave Alert can do for you. Ron Guilmette, chief of Police Services, explained that the Rave system “allows Police Services to send emergency information via email, text and/or voice messages” to ensure that you aren’t left out in the cold (literally, sometimes). Guilmette said in his email last week, “Emergencies include, but are not limited to, college shut down due to weather, power outages, natural disasters, and fires.”
