The University is implementing new security measures due to heightened concerns over campus safety following last April's shootings at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, administrators said.Colleges across the country have announced plans to unveil new emergency communications procedures in response to the shootings, where Virginia Tech student Seung Hung-Choi shot and killed 33 and injured 25 on his campus.

In an Aug. 7 campuswide e-mail, Executive Vice President for Campus Operations Peter French announced that Brandeis "recently purchased and installed a campus-wide siren-alert system and upgraded our existing email, telephone and Web communications capabilities."

Though he couldn't provide individual figures, Mark Collins, vice president of campus operations, said the added technology in total costs "well over $100,000."

Director of Public Safety Ed Callahan said he, other administrators and Waltham officials convened "in earnest" over the summer to discuss how Brandeis' technology could be upgraded to improve security. These talks resulted in the development of new systems "on the cutting edge of communicating.to the community," Callahan said.

Sirens, which have been placed at the Volen Center, the Rabb Graduate Center and by the Spingold Theater parking lot (one more will be affixed near the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center), will be activated to alert students, faculty and staff to check their cell phone text messages for security instructions, Callahan said.

"The vendor did a topographical study," Callahan said, "so the tones could be emitted to the campus on a consistent fashion."

Students, faculty and staff can voluntarily submit their cell phone numbers and any other e-mail addresses and emergency contact numbers on SAGE at http://crisis.brandeis.edu/index.html.

Vice-President and Vice-Provost of Library and Technology Services Perry Hanson said the University signed with Connect-Ed, an academically based emergency notification company, to send out text messages to cell phones in emergency situations. The messages will contain safety instructions, Hanson said.

"I would hopefully feel that the community is welcome to this alert notification system and I would urge them to participate because it's an enhancement of the security and safety of the campus, and it's beneficial to the community," Callahan said.

Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of New Mexico, the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Cincinnati are just a few of the universities that have recently implemented a text messaging notification system as well. Princeton also works with Connect-Ed.

Administrators will also now be able to reach students more effectively through the campus phones, Hanson said. The University signed with InformaCast, a company that allows administrators to send text and voice announcements to the campus phones, which are part of the University's network and located in dormitory rooms, classrooms, offices and hallways.

Hanson said the new phone software essentially turns the Cisco phones into broadcast systems.

Because the phones have speakers, Hanson said, "We realized we could use the phone system as a public address system.

"It would be like you have a bullhorn, but it would be like you have 6,000 of them," he said. "It was something we knew we could do and I just presented it as a possibility and everyone liked the idea."

It takes around 30 seconds for a voice announcement to reach and broadcast over a phone, Hanson said. Text messages will take slightly longer to appear; a couple of minutes, he estimated. Administrators will continue to send out campuswide e-mails with instructions in emergency situations.

"I feel good about what we can do now," Callahan said. "I'll feel better after we do some testing. A lot of the success will be in how responsive people are to letting us know whether or not they want to get a message on their cell phones."

Hanson is also confident in the new technology.

"We've got the best stuff possible," he said. "I don't know if there's any other thing we can do right now. Will it make a difference? I don't know. But if it does make a difference, it's worth doing."

Virginia Tech's police response was accused of being too slow and its communications procedures as being a failure. Police sent out a campuswide e-mail message about what was going on two hours after the first of the two shootings at Virginia Tech, but many students said they didn't receive the information and left for class anyway.

Callahan has also spent the summer once again training Quad directors and other staff in the emergency and evacuation protocols. He said periodic tests of the new technology will occur throughout the year.

"Once the student body comes back we're going to incorporate students and the whole community to do this as a continual learning process," he said. "We look at this as an educational expansion of the emergency response plan.