Code Maroon usage a flat fee

Service firm says A&M could have used alert system for Heldenfelds closing at no extra cost.

By: Travis Robinson

Posted: 2/12/08

Early Wednesday, Texas A&M students and faculty members received an e-mail warning them of a written threat regarding Heldenfels Hall.

Heldenfels, near the Student Computing Center, is used by thousands of students a day, primarily for math and science classes and labs.

After searching the building the night before and declaring that it was "reasonably certain to be safe," the University Police Department closed Heldenfels for the day and canceled classes. Despite efforts to uncover the details of the threat, the UPD was unwilling to release any information that was not in the e-mail sent to students.

In the wake of the Virgina Tech shootings, A&M set out to be at the forefront of preventing such a tragedy on its campus. With the inception of Code Maroon, A&M set up an official manner to warn students by text message of potential threats in and around campus.

The text messaging service is provided by the E2campus firm, which provides services to campuses across the nation. E2campus spokesman Brian Krum said that E2campus' pricing policy for A&M does not charge by the message, but is a flat rate.

He said A&M pays 82 1/2 cents for each user, each year. Though unable to disclose the exact number of users, he estimated that with student and faculty users on the A&M campus could be as many as 100,000.

"We didn't want to put schools in an ethical dilemma and force them to decide whether sending out a warning would be worth the cost," Krum said.

Code Maroon underwent an initial test trial on

Sept. 9, 2007, but the results showed that many students never received a message.

"The safety of our students, faculty and staff is always paramount," University officials said in a written statement regarding the closing of Heldenfels. However, phone calls to University officials went unreturned when contacted about the status of Code Maroon.

Students were confused as to why it was not used. Since there was no official announcement of the results of the Code Maroon test on Sept. 9, students who received the test message, like Craig Lillie, were confused. "Yeah, I want to know where my Code Maroon message was," said Lillie, a junior biology major. "I wished they'd used it. It was a bomb threat."

All students and faculty were notified by e-mail, but many were unaware of the closing or the potential threat. Freshman kinesiology major Kaitlyn Lynch went to the building for her 8 a.m. test. She said that checking her e-mail wasn't a priority at the time and a text message would have been more effective.

Lynch said that she wished Code Maroon had been used regardless of how legitimate the bomb threat was. "I figured if there was a bomb threat that we should definitely know, even if it wasn't that believable."

However, regardless of how many people on campus check their e-mails consistently and on the way to exams, many couldn't even access their e-mail. The overhaul of the University's e-mail system was completed on Feb. 2. Though promoted to an overall upgrade, the system was less effective in communicating a warning than word of mouth. "I didn't even get an e-mail at all," said Jared Cavazos, a senior computer engineering major, and full-time worker at the Memorial Student Center.

Computing and Information Services admitted to having problems with e-mail accounts belonging to students who are full-time staff or who have graduate status. CIS was optimistic that many of the issues were fixed, though.

According to the Virginia Tech internal review of the April 16 massacre, the main strategies to improve security included enhancing overall communication throughout the campus. A&M officials soon thereafter made communication a priority on A&M's campus.