In the wake of a brutal on-campus murder at Virginia Tech University last Wednesday, an emergency alert system put in place after the April 2007 shootings there was called into use, sending emergency messages to approximately 30,000 mobile devices. The death of graduate student Xin Yang marked the first killing at the Blacksburg, Va., university since 32 students and faculty members were killed by a student gunman in the deadliest campus shooting in American history.
Authorities said Yang, 22, of Beijing, was stabbed to death and beheaded by another Chinese graduate student, Haiyang Zhu, 25, as the two shared coffee at the Au Bon Pain cafe in Virginia Tech's Graduate Life Center on Jan. 21. When Yang arrived at the university on Jan. 8, Zhu was designated to help her acclimate to campus, and records indicate she listed him as one of two emergency contacts.
Witnesses to Wednesday's attack said the violence came without warning. Police arrived within minutes of the murder, arrested Zhu at the crime scene and discovered a number of edged weapons in his backpack.
Due to the rapid police response, emergency messages were sent out "as an advisory, not an alert," Larry Hincker, associate vice president for university relations at Virginia Tech, wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. The university revamped its emergency notification system after the 2007 massacre, and campus officials used the new "VT Alert" system to send text messages, voicemails and e-mails to registered mobile devices. Brown implemented a similar system in the wake of the 2007 attack.
According to the Associated Press, Zhu was taken into custody around 7:10 p.m. At 7:44, a message went out telling students to stay in place and avoid the Graduate Life Center. A second message sent at 8:37 confirmed the suspect was in custody. It advised students to avoid the crime scene but otherwise resume normal activity.
The emergency messages were sent "within 15 minutes of contact" with police, Hincker wrote, 35 minutes after the initial 911 call.
But some Virginia Tech students expressed concern about the time lag between the murder and the emergency notification.
Matthew Davenport, a sophomore, told The Herald he was with friends at the time of the murder and "received the message five minutes before anyone else" in the group.
"What if something happens in the future and I'm one of those that receives the message too late?" Davenport said. "I believe that the system needs to be much faster than it has shown to be."
But Hincker said the message got out as fast as possible. "One can't send a message before one knows that an event happened," Hincker wrote.
When a false alarm triggered use of the VT Alert system in November 2008, the Virginia Tech Collegiate Times reported that some people registered for the service did not receive the e-mails, text messages and voicemails.
Another sophomore, Sameer Ponkshe, also said there was a discrepancy between the time his friends received the message and the time he was notified. But Ponkshe said "the school really has taken all the necessary precautions" for student safety, adding that he knew of nothing about last Wednesday's incident "that could have been prevented."
"It was just that bizarre," Ponkshe said of the murder.
And while Davenport said the killing would inevitably invoke bad memories of the bloodbath that took place on the campus in 2007, he said comparisons between the two crimes are unwarranted.
"They are two completely different incidents and shouldn't be thought of otherwise," Davenport said.
"Obviously there will be lots of parallels drawn by the media, but the kids at this school don't think like that," Ponkshe said.
