“I think we’re missing an awful lot of the population out there that hasn’t taken the time to sign up,” MSU police Inspector Bill Wardwell said.

The current number of subscribers is sufficient to spread word across campus, MSU police Sgt. Florene McGlothian-Taylor said.

“I think if there were just two or three people in a classroom that got the message, that within itself would be a success to spread the word to other people within the classroom,” she said.

But measures can be taken to increase the program’s exposure, McGlothian-Taylor said.

“There are numbers of departments that have a listserv on campus,” she said. “So I’m thinking about contacting those people – different faculty, staff associations, the Division of Student Affairs and Services.”

MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon said the university also is considering methods of reminding students about the program, such as an additional e-mail.

Hospitality business senior Alexandra Ballas didn’t subscribe to the program and doesn’t plan to.

“Maybe I was just lazy,” she said. “I didn’t really find it to be necessary.”

The program was created by John Prush, the information technology and records manager for the police department, in two months time and at zero cost to the university.

“The one thing we did to save money was create it in-house,” Prush said. “One of the things we wanted to do was use available university resources. There are servers already available to campus that we took advantage of.”

Across the country, private vendors are approaching universities about implementing similar programs, but at a cost of hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions of dollars, according to officials at other universities.

“Unfortunately, there are vendors out there trying to make money off a terrible tragedy,” Prush said.

Simon said the in-house system not only saves money and time for the university, but it also prevents those third-party vendors from abusing the system.

“With some of the other text messaging systems, you’re subject to paid advertisements,” Simon said. “Ours will be used only rarely, if at all, and you’re not subjecting yourself to other types of messages because we’re not selling the list.”

The only way the program would come at a cost for students is if they do not receive free text messages on their cell phone plan.

“It’s a good thing,” said medical technology junior Amanda Carlson, who is signed up for the system.

“I’m an (emergency medical technician), so emergency stuff means a lot to me. I think a lot of people didn’t hear about it. Everyone seems to have a cell phone now. If there’s an emergency and they sent out a text, people would find out about it.”

Joey Nowak can be reached at nowakjo2@msu.edu.