As workers labored to restore power to Tufts' Medford/Somerville campus and parts of Medford on Friday and Saturday, university administrators relied on an improved emergency alert system to keep students, faculty and staff abreast of the situation.
Administrators sent out four alerts via SMS text message and e-mail to members of the Tufts community registered in the emergency alert system over the course of the day on Friday, and one at approximately 5:30 a.m. Saturday when power was restored.
Geoffrey Bartlett, technical services manager in the Department of Public Safety, said he was not aware of any significant faults in Send Word Now's functioning, although some students reported not receiving text message notification.
Junior Ha Vo said that she only received e-mail alerts from the system, which were not particularly useful since the internet accessibility was down in most dorms.
"I lost internet access in my room, and it was only until I went to a friend's house that I had access to e-mail," she said.
After last fall's power outage, the university altered the way it employs the system, popularly called Send Word Now after the company that supplies it, this year sending more messages and limiting the communication channels utilized.
The changes resulted from meetings over the past year between administrators, staff and student leaders after a number of students voiced concerns over the university's alert system during the blackout last October, according to Bartlett.
A crisis communications work group including representatives from the Department of Public Safety, University Information Technology (UIT) and University Relations met and laid the groundwork for a "subaccount" of the emergency alert system, used for urgent but not life-threatening situations when "we don't need to push all the buttons at once," Bartlett said.
Send Word Now can contact people over telephone with voice recordings, but administrators elected not to use that mode of communication because the situation was not life-threatening, according to Bartlett.
The frequency of alerts this year stood in stark contrast to the one message sent out during the power outage last year, which left most of the Medford/Somerville campus in the dark after a failure in a transfer station located near Dowling Hall. That blackout lasted about 14 hours; this weekend's continued for a little over 19 hours.
In mid-September, the alert system sent an e-mail to Tufts students asking them to update contact information. Sophomore Hilary Ross, who did not receive text messages during the blackout either, was among several who did not update her information.
"It's my own fault for not signing up for the texts," Ross said. "At first, I felt really lost and confused when I didn't get the texts because everyone else knew what was going on and I didn't."
Bartlett said the contact information of Tufts students and staff entered into the system last year rolled over this year. But if individuals did not identify their phone number as coming from a cell phone, as opposed to a landline, the system would not send a text message to that number.
Bartlett said students and staff can request another invite to register or update their information by contacting the UIT support center.
Last year's sole alert — which came in the form of text messages and voice recordings was sent out over five hours after power went out. Administrators had been hesitant to employ the system last year, as they did not term the power outage a life-threatening emergency.
One change to the system this time around appeared to be more cosmetic. Instead of labeling transmitted messages as emanating from the Tufts Emergency Alert System, as had been done in the past, this year's texts and e-mails said they came from "Tufts University."
The former label had aroused anxiety in many, Bartlett said.
Freshman Laurie Rabin, who received all of the alerts via text message, said that she was pleased with the university's constant updates but found the information lacking in details.
Sophomore Taylor Perkins felt differently, saying that he felt that the university updated students adequately but often with unnecessary information.
"Saying things like ‘power out in Medford' to the people in Medford is kind of redundant," Perkins said.
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Katherine Sawyer and Alexandra Bogus contributed reporting to this article.
