Gary Bugg, director of security for Centre College, said the school had its first opportunity to try out a new campus alert system this week during the inclement weather Wednesday morning, and so far he's sold.

"Before, we would do a phone tree, which is when the resident advisers would each call four people who were each responsible for calling so many people ...," said Bugg, in reference to getting the word out about any type of warning affecting the campus community. "We would also use mass e-mails, but students don't constantly sit at their computers."

That's where Tom Schuhmann comes in. Schuhmann, a Louisville native who's daughter graduated from Centre College, said just like any parent with kids in college, he could not get the Virginia Tech shooting incident from last year out of his mind. Accounts after the shooting said the school did have an e-mail warning system in place, but it was criticized for alerting students after the fact or not getting the word out to enough of the campus population.

Schuhmann contacted a friend, Joe Zanchi, who is a Centre College alum himself. Zanchi owns Empire Date Tech, a data hosting system out of Louisville, which is the parent company to CollegeSafetyNet.

"I just told Joe (Zanchi) about my concerns, which weren't only about shootings but fires, storms and other things. I told him about my idea and he helped me make it happen," Schuhmann said.

What makes CollegeSafetyNet different from other campus alert systems, says Schuhmann, is the four-prong warning technique. Schuhmann, like Bugg, says students are not tied to their computers, but most do carry cell phones.

"We do send an e-mail, but also a phone call to two different numbers, like a dorm and an off-campus number. The system also sends out a text message," Schuhmann said. If the phone calls are met with a voice mail or answering machine, the system will automatically call that number back in five minutes, he said.

"We've had a great response," Bugg said. "Especially after Wednesday's storm. Students were able to take cover immediately."

Student reaction is positive

He said resident advisers relayed students' reactions back to him, and they were highly favorable.

"We heard it worked great during the storm, and it did exactly what we wanted it to do - it woke the kids up and got them down into the basement," Schuhmann said.

Bugg said contact must be made with students during an emergency within a 30 minute period.

"When we tested the system, we found that the message was received by the population in less than eight minutes," Bugg said. "We've also been hearing about a mandate that will soon come down about all schools being required to have some type of alert system like this in place."

Schuhmann said he and Zanchi have purposely kept the cost of the system as low as possible.

Centre College is Schuhmann's first college client, he said, adding many high schools in Louisville also are testing the system out for their use.

"Some are using it for things like coaches to make calls to their teams if practice is canceled, for snow days, things like this," Schuhmann said. "Again, we're just really starting it up and getting it running."

"Different schools handle the cost in different ways, some incorporate it into the student fee, and other schools have different opinions of how to handle it," Schuhmann said. "But we thought as long as we kept it reasonable, what parent wouldn't be interested in paying a few extra bucks for their kid's safety? I know I would."

To learn more about the alert system, visit www.collegesafetynet.com.