Editor’s note: This article is about a test of UF’s emergency alert system. If there had been an actual emergency, this article would have appeared on Page 1.
UF officials have preliminarily deemed the results from Wednesday’s test of the UF Alert system positive.
According to UF figures, 64,396 texts were sent to the aggregator, which sends it to students, in one minute and 52 seconds, an improvement from the test last April, which set the record at three minutes and 24 seconds.
“It’s much more in the neighborhood of where we want it,” said UF spokesman Steve Orlando. “It’s much better.”
The number of people opting out of the text notifications system decreased by about 800, from 2,877 to 2,035.
E-mails were sent to 82,098 ufl.edu accounts with a lag — 47 percent were delivered at 10 minutes and 65 percent at 20 minutes.
An e-mail sent to administrators said previous tests have demonstrated that more than 90 percent of the messages can be delivered by the 20-minute mark. UF Computer & Networking Services is researching the issue.
Orlando said the university is pleased to see an increase in students following UF’s social media pages on Facebook and Twitter.
“No one should become reliant on any single way of receiving the message,” he said.
