American Univ. Students Getting Two-Way Alert System

One year after the killings at Virginia Tech many campuses around the country, including Virginia Tech have upgraded security by developing systems to send out email and text message alerts to students cell phones if there is an incident on campus. One local school is making the message system two-way.

Starting in September, students at American University, when faced with a crime or some other emergency, will be able to send an alert that lets the campus police know exactly where the student is.

"If they hit the panic button, then it automatically sends an alert to the campus police," says A.U. police chief Michael McNair.

According to McNair, the police will know exactly where the student is based on a GPS system in the phones. There is one catch: the student will have to use Sprint cell phone service and a program called Rave Wireless which costs an additional monthly fee.

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