TigerText, the University of Memphis’ emergency alert text messaging service, keeps students, faculty and staff informed and protected, but only if they’re signed up for the feature.
According to the school’s website, “the optional service is used in the event of an on-campus emergency, an unscheduled university closing, or a delay or cancellation of classes due to, for instance, inclement weather.”
The service is free to students but standard text messaging rates apply.
The text messaging system was put in place in 2007 shortly after the Virginia Tech massacre and the U of M campus began to focus more on student safety.
Bruce Harber, director of public safety and Police Services, is encouraging students to reactivate their TigerText accounts by signing up online for the service. He said students are unaware that their service deactivates after being enrolled for a certain amount of time.
“The biggest challenge with TigerText is keeping people signing up,” Harber said. “What happens is the accounts expire, and we’ve never been close to the almost 20,000 licenses we had early on from the people we have on campus being signed up to receive the alerts.”