Texas A&M University officials this week are distributing hundreds of radios that will allow administrators and law officers to broadcast urgent messages directly to campus classrooms and dorms if an emergency strikes.

The radios are the third and final phase of Code Maroon, an emergency notification system implemented by A&M officials last year after the massacre on the Virginia Tech campus.

Like weather radios, they scan the frequency, automatically switching on to broadcast emergency messages, A&M Telecommunications Director Walt Magnussen said. However, each has been programed to broadcast only the alerts issued by University Police and Brazos County tornado warnings.

"When the whole Code Maroon concept was put together, the overriding goal was to alert as many people as we possibly could in as short of a time period as was possible," Magnussen said, explaining that the radios were simply another tool used by the notification system.

The establishment of Code Maroon was announced in May 2007, and the first phase of the system -- text, voice mail and e-mail messaging -- was up and running by the fall semester. The second phase, implemented several months ago, scrolls the emergency messages at the bottoms of all television screens on campus.

The radio messages will be broadcast via KAMU FM 90.9, the station to which the radios will be programmed.

After the message is broadcast, the red light on the radios will blink. Magnussen said this is designed for people who might have been out of the room and didn't hear the message. The light serves as an indicator, telling people to immediately refer to the university Web site for the missed message, he said.

"Initially, we opted to place one in each residence hall, with each of the building proctors, and each department will be assigned one. We want as broad a coverage as we can without trying to buy hundreds of thousands of these radios," Magnussen said. "We're counting on, from there, relying heavily on social networks."

A&M is one of the first campuses to use such a radio system for emergency alerts. Many other schools use sirens, but such a method doesn't allow administrators to explain to students that they should stay inside or evacuate, he said.

Magnussen said the university purchased nearly 600 radios, some of which will remain in stock. The radios cost $65 each, and the initial order was funded by the president's office. A&M System agencies in College Station -- such as the Texas Engineering Experiment Station and AgriLife Research -- can purchase radios, he said.

The radios were being delivered Thursday and were expected to be in place and working by the time fall semester classes start Monday. A system test likely will be scheduled within the next month or so, he said.

"It's really no better or worse than the other methods we're using -- this system also isn't 100 percent fail-safe. Someone might not be in the room at the time," Magnussen said. "Since none of them are 100 percent, we figure you take 90 percent times 90 percent times 90 percent and you're doing pretty good."

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Posted by: On: 8/23/2008

Comment Title: Magnussen: Hundreds of thousands of radios?
Good thing you managed to cut it down to 600 from "hundreds of thousands". Too bad you seem to have enough that you can "put some in storage" but TEES and Agrilite can "BUY" some.

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