SpringfieldNewsSun.com

Wittenberg University is one of the first higher education centers in Ohio to offer emergency cell phone text messaging to its campus community.

The service, through e2Campus, allows university officials to transmit a message to thousands of cell phones in a matter of minutes, said Maureen Massaro, Wittenberg's associate vice president for human resources. The service, which began this semester, is optional but encouraged for faculty, staff and students. Students sign up through the university's internal portal and decide who can have access to their cell phone numbers.

"E-mail and voicemail can only reach so many people in a short amount of time," Massaro said. "We wanted to ensure that we were using any and all avenues to communicate with our campus in the event of an emergency situation."

The university is one of about 100 colleges, including Ohio's Miami and Ashland universities, using e2campus texting service.

"The events at Virginia Tech last spring made all of us in higher education review our efforts at preventing such a tragedy," said Carl Loney, Wittenberg chief of police and security. "Having this new form of communication available is just one more way for us to protect the campus."

Officials can use the service for weather-related emergencies too, said university spokesman Ryan Maurer.

"Clark County had a tornado warning (this summer) and we had no way of relating that (at the time,)" Maurer said. "I had students later tell me they were watching MTV and didn't know there were storms out there."