The second test of Ithaca College’s Emergency Notification System (ENS) last Thursday successfully reached 95 percent of the community members who provided their contact information.
Dave Maley, director of media relations, said the test began at 12:14 p.m. In 45 minutes, each phone number that had been provided was called up to three times, an e-mail was sent to every Ithaca College Webmail or otherwise provided e-mail account and a text message was sent to every phone number provided. An automated voice mail was left for every unsuccessful phone call.

According to the results provided by Connect-Ed, a company that designs communication systems, 88 percent of faculty and 88 percent of staff members received a successful phone call or voice mail. At the time of the test, 1,521 students had entered a phone number into the database, and 98 percent of those students were reached successfully or left voice mails. Of the students who had signed up for the test, 26 did not receive successful communication.

About 25 percent of students have signed up for alerts. Maley said he hopes more students will sign up, but he believes the test shows the system is still effective.

“We don’t expect 100 percent sign-up,” he said. “The idea is that the critical mass will receive the alert … and those people will tell each other.”