The massacre at Virginia Tech last April sent colleges nationwide scrambling to improve how they send alerts to students during crises on campus. One widely adopted solution: text messages sent to cell phones. But while hundreds of campuses have adopted text alerts, most students are not embracing the systems, reports The Associated Press (AP)—even in an age when students consider their mobile phones indispensable.

Omnilert, a Northern Virginia company that provides an emergency alert system called e2Campus to more than 500 campuses, reports an average enrollment rate among students, faculty, and staff of just 39 percent.

Another industry leader, NTI Group (now a subsidiary of Blackboard Inc.), reports even lower participation—28 percent for the 300 campuses that use its Connect-ED emergency alerts.Across the country, colleges “are really struggling with how to get the enrollment numbers up,” said Steven Healey, Princeton University’s public safety director and an expert on campus security.

Other companies who provide the services declined to release detailed enrollment figures to AP.

The University of Missouri’s Columbia campus tried a giveaway—students who signed up for the alerts were entered in a drawing for an iPod Nano—in hopes of improving its rate. Just 15 percent of the roughly 28,000 students have requested text-message alerts or cell-phone calls during emergencies.

“I found out about it a long time ago and never signed up,” said Kaitlin Foley, a first-year student at Missouri from Omaha, Neb. “I was too lazy.”

The low participation, and fresh concern following the deaths of five Northern Illinois University (NIU) students by a gunman earlier this month, led University of Missouri president Gary Forsee to issue a new plea.

“Alert systems are only as effective as our ability to make contact with you,” he wrote in an eMail message to each of the system’s four campuses, encouraging students to enroll immediately.

Even at Virginia Tech, where a gunman killed 32 people and himself last April, four in 10 students still have not signed up for emergency text alerts. The campus also employs other alert methods, including eMails and online instant messages.

Campus safety experts point to several factors to explain the lack of interest among students, including feelings of invincibility and reluctance to give out personal information.

Others hesitate to pay the fees—generally a matter of pennies—that some cell-phone providers charge to send and receive texts. Colleges generally pay $1 to $4 per enrolled student to the companies that set up the alerts.

“It will take time to earn their trust,” said Bryan Crum, an Omnilert spokesman. “That day will come once they see how it can personally benefit them—and once they realize we’re not out there to sell their personal information, and that 10-cent charges once or twice a semester is worth the price of personal safety.”

“Teachers, watch what you post online”: That, in effect, was the message the Ohio Education Association (OEA), the state’s largest teachers union, delivered to Ohio educators in a memo it sent last month.

The memo strongly discouraged teachers from using social-networking web sites such as MySpace and Facebook to create personal profiles or communicate with students.

“OEA advises members not to join [these sites], and for existing users to complete the steps involved in removing their profiles,” the memo said. “While this advice might seem extreme, the dangers of participating in these two sites outweigh the benefits.”

An investigation by the Columbus Dispatch into educator misconduct underscores the reasons for the union’s concern.

The newspaper’s recent probe has revealed questionable or inappropriate content on at least three MySpace profiles belonging to people who say they are Ohio teachers.

One says she’s an “aggressive freak in bed,” another says she has taken drugs and likes to party, and a third describes his mood as “dirty,” the Dispatch reported Nov. 10. The guy with the dirty mood, who claims to be a 35-year-old middle school math teacher in Cleveland, reportedly listed students among his MySpace friends.

The profiles could be the work of malicious pranksters, but the three examples appear legitimate, with all types of personal and professional information, including full resumes, the Dispatch reported.

If those three postings are from teachers, they’re inappropriate, said James Miller, director of the Office of Professional Conduct at the Ohio Department of Education. Even worse, he said, “It does sound like something that could be ‘conduct unbecoming’.”

That’s a broadly defined violation of educator behavior that can result in license revocations, suspensions, and written reprimands.

Teachers need to review what they’re sharing online, Miller warned: “It’s their right to have it up. But I’d make sure it’s appropriate for my students to look at.”

The OEA sent its memo to teachers on Oct. 16, two days after the Dispatch launched its investigation. However, union officials said they had been planning the memo for months.

“The fact that a student can attempt to contact an OEA member who has a profile on these sites lends itself to the possible interpretation of an improper relationship,” the memo told teachers. “Because of the high standards placed on school employees and the risk of job and career loss, the OEA recommends avoiding even the appearance of impropriety.”

The union also worries that students will create “impostor” sites, pose as adults and engage in conversations with teachers, or use online communication to make allegations later against educators.

“[There are a] lot of potential problems of false allegations, false pages, postings that have absolutely nothing to do with the intention of the teachers,” said Rachelle Johnson, the union’s legal services director.

Anything posted on those sites can be used as evidence in disciplinary hearings by districts and the state Education Department, the union warns.

OEA says it drafted the memo without help from the National Education Association (NEA), the national organization of which it is a state affiliate. Attempts to reach the NEA were unsuccessful as of press time.