Is the UT Alert system arbitrary? After an incident that happened on The Strip Halloween night, I’m beginning to think that it is.
UT Alerts go out to every student at UT, and are meant to make students, both on campus and off, aware of possibly threatening situations that are happening in close proximity to campus. Whether it’s an armed robbery, shooting or a couple of black bears strolling around campus (I’m not even joking, underclassmen), UT Alerts let students know to not go anywhere near an area, or take shelter when necessary. This is a pretty nifty tool for students to have, wouldn’t you say? It’s kind of nice knowing when crap is going down outside, so you don’t happen upon it unaware.
This is nice for on-campus students, as well as off-campus. I would even go so far as to say it’s more important for off-campus students, especially in The Fort. While on-campus students have the luxury of dorm security, most Fortlandians don’t. As a resident of The Fort myself, I’d much rather receive an alert that may not end up being serious than not receive one at all that ends up being very serious.
That’s exactly what happened Halloween night. A man was shot and killed behind a bar on The Strip, and if you’re a student that doesn’t watch the local news, which I’m guessing is most of us, you probably never even knew it happened. Why is this a problem? Well, they never caught the guy. So, there was a stretch of time where you had an armed murderer in the area without a single student knowing on the night when more students were out and about in the Fort than maybe any other night of the year. Sound just a little dangerous? I agree.
The question of why an alert didn’t go out that night went unanswered for almost a week. Troy Lane, Chief of the UT Police Department, said in an interview on Thursday, “What we found was over the years, we had a lot of UT Alerts going out, and people stopped paying attention to them.”
That’s fair. It’s a valid point that you don’t want these alerts to be become too common. But I don’t think this incident falls into the category of minor crimes that don’t pertain to students. I would say most students would want to know about something like this. He also said that the crime didn’t fall within the defined Clery boundary, but that’s just not true. The Strip and The Fort are both located well within the Clery boundary. The Clery act is the law that puts requirements on local and university police to send out safety notices, among other things. It does give a good bit of discretion to the police chief and their designee, so I probably wouldn’t say this was a violation of that statute, but that doesn’t make this any less serious.
I disagree with the decision not to issue an alert that night, solely because I know there were students walking around The Fort at that time, and they probably would have wanted to know about the shooting, because if nothing else, they could’ve at least been aware of it. I ask that Chief Lane and his deputies err on the side of caution with UT Alerts in the future, because what harm could that possibly do? Living in the Fort is already sketch enough, and the UT Alert may be the only thing students have to be aware of what’s happening just a few blocks away.
Thomas Carpenter is a senior in Classics. He can be reached at [email protected].
