Phones 4 UR Safety

Continued...

Maybe you have sat down to rest on the gruelling 20 minute journey, maybe you are dead, maybe you don’t know how to work the phone, who knows? At least there’s a measurable chance they will find either a) your body or b) the guy who stole your exciting looking mobile.

Of course you can see why people are concerned with student safety in American universities. Tragedies like the Virginia Tech massacre raised serious concerns about campus security, and universities are being called upon to make sure their students are safe. Montclair is one of a growing number of universities that are adopting GPS technology in order to help address the problem, because obviously the Virginia tech shootings could have been avoided if the students had GPS bleepers.

Police sergeant Paul Giardinoi explains, "Maybe they're hiding and are hurt. Maybe they wouldn't want to talk because they're hiding behind a desk and the gunman's in the room. They'd have a better chance of being located.” You see? Yes, a lack of GPS, that’s the problem. Not the availability of firearms, not the failure of the pastoral care system. GPS. But I digress.

For their $210 per semester, the students get free texts, access to their campus email, free calls in the evening and free calls all the time to other Sprint users, Sprint being the network of choice for this kind of arrangement. Sprint installed extra towers around the campus to ensure network coverage and a company called Rave handled the security aspects. The entire system costs $2 million to run, which is a non-profit making kind of sum for the university. Students appear to be grumbling a bit about the paltry 50 minutes of free talktime they get on top of the package, but then students do seem to enjoy grumbling.

People are apparently looking forward to the day when the phone system can be incorporated into the battery of options available for use in class. Conducting speedy polls among the students in a lecture is one of the options suggested so far. God help us when the first words out of a lecturer’s mouth are, “Now, could everyone make sure they have their mobile phones switched on?”

Previous page 1 | 2 Next page