Budrevich: UT Alerts fail at communicating
The key to every successful relationship is good communication, whether that relationship is between friends, family or significant others. Communication is even important in the relationship between a university and its students; actually, it is especially important in that relationship. Unfortunately, it seems that the University of Toledo is severely lacking in the communication department, as all of the students discovered first-hand last week during the water main break. If students wanted information on this campus-wide crisis, they had to go digging, relying mainly on information from outside sources and each other, which is always a dangerous game to play. The few bits of information that the university did decide to share with its students were cryptic and unhelpful, doing more harm than good.
Now don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love UT, but every relationship could use a bit of work. The main form of communication UT has with its students during emergencies is the handy-dandy UT Alert system, which is able to send school-wide texts, managing to get a lot of information to everyone and the same time, which would be an incredibly useful tool in situations like the water main break. However, it is an incredibly imperfect system. The first text message sent out by UT Alert last Tuesday did a great job of stating what the problem was — the water main break — and how it immediately affected us — no food service in the Student Union. After that, though, things got a bit chaotic. The text message skipped about seven lines and then simply ended with the words “A water.” Clearly, there was meant to be more to the text message, but it was never received, lost somewhere out in the atmosphere, with the remainder of the transcript never to be known or conveyed to its intended recipients. I, like many of my friends, anxiously awaited the rest of a message that was destined never to come.
Like the problem-solver that I am, I decided to look to my email, to see if the university had sent out any information that was a bit more informative. To my delight, they had. There in my inbox was an email from the Office of Residence Life, which was clearly originally intended to be sent to my phone via UT Alert. The email ended with the promise that UT would give more information to its students as said information became available, which would have been a sweet memento, if the university had actually followed through. Instead, we received no more information throughout the day, not even a list of which buildings would be affected or where the water would be safe to drink.
As the Student Union is our main source for our food, my friends and I were forced to order food for the next few days, instead of walking all the way across campus in the freezing weather with no promise of heat in whichever building we ended up in. Additionally, we were forced to conserve our water bottles and take cold showers. I actually just ended up filling a gallon jug with water that I had heated up in the microwave to wash my hair.
UT was kind enough to offer free water bottles to students in the Student Union, which I would have taken full advantage of, if I had known about it. Unfortunately, I didn’t know about it because the university did not make that information available to everyone until after the fact, so you only got free water if you happened to stumble into the union to shelter yourself from the blistering cold on your way to your next class.
While the Main Campus may have struggled with sharing information with its students, the engineering campus communicated to its affiliates excellently. Dr. Molitor, interim associate dean for undergraduate studies, attached his own information to the UT Alert concerning engineering campus’s closing the following day in order to repair the water main. His email, unlike the UT Alert email, informed students exactly which parts of the engineering campus would be affected, and offered additional information about the career fair being held there that day. He also thought to include the fact that the engineering campus would be under a water boil advisory after the water was up and running again, a detail that the UT Alert failed to mention.
At least some of UT’s campuses know how to communicate to their students effectively.
The afternoon of the day following the water main disaster, UT Alert finally got its act together, but it was too little too late. We learned which buildings had their water turned off after the water had already turned back on, making the information moot at that point. The heat in the buildings had also been reduced, if you didn’t notice when your dorm room temperature dropped from a nice 70⁰ F to a dreadful 60⁰ F or below, or when you couldn’t hear your professor lecturing over the sound of the chattering teeth of people who refused to wear their winter coats indoors. We were informed that the Student Union water lines had been flushed and that food services would continue at an undisclosed time in the hopefully near future. Also, we finally learned of the free water offered in the union. Oh, and the basketball game was cancelled, so hopefully you didn’t try to go to that.
While UT Alert is an excellent system, with the potential to be informative, helpful and greatly appreciated by students and faculty alike, it is nowhere up to snuff as of yet, which was made abundantly obvious by last week’s water main break. UT Alert needs to provide reliable, useful information clearly and efficiently. Hopefully during the next disaster (which will undoubtedly happen), UT Alert will be able to convey necessary information and act as a help, rather than a hindrance, to the populace.
Jordan Budrevich is a first-year majoring in bioengineering.
