CUNY A!ert system coming soon

Students at all City University of New York (CUNY) institutions including the five schools in Queens could begin receiving emergency alert text and phone messages as soon as March.
CUNY A!ert, which all students, faculty and staff can already begin signing up for, will deliver notices and instructions regarding fire, medical, weather and other emergencies.
The system, which CUNY developed in conjunction with the New York State Emergency Management Office, will be an opt-in service, and those who sign up can choose whether they want to receive their emergency notices by cell phone text or voicemail, landline voicemail or e-mail.
“It’s a definite benefit,” said Cindy Freidmutter, Vice President of External Affairs at LaGuardia Community College. “You can see what happened with St. John’s University [gunman on campus] last summer, so we want to let people know about emergencies as soon as possible.”
CUNY’s Office of University Relations will coordinate sending messages that go to all CUNY personnel, however, the individual schools will appoint people at their institution to send out messages that are only appropriate for the individual schools, according to CUNY spokesperson Rita Rodin.
Prior to CUNY A!ert, Queens College was the only CUNY institution in the borough to have an emergency alert system in place, and currently, roughly 7,000 out of 21,000 eligible applicants have registered to receive updates.
However, Queens College will also switch over to CUNY A!ert, but currently those 7,000 applicants will have to reregister for the new system.
Naveed Hussain, who is the Chief Information Officer at Queens College, said CUNY is planning a training session in the upcoming weeks to educate school officials about the particulars of the new plan.
Meanwhile, Hussain believes that since Queens College already had an emergency alert system in place, it will be ahead of the curve in terms of process and protocol.
“We lived through an entire cycle,” said Hussain, referring to a car-jacking incident near campus last year where the college sent out an alert to all of those who signed up.
Currently CUNY institutions are working on different ways to encourage students to sign up for the service.
At LaGuardia, the school is planning a major marketing campaign at the end of February to coincide with the start of the school’s new semester, according to Freidmutter. There, students will receive information about CUNY A!ert and have the opportunity to sign up for the service while on campus.
To sign up for CUNY A!ert, students, faculty and staff can log onto www.cuny.edu/alert and follow the instructions.