Along with educating students at Connors State College, keeping students safe on campus in the event bad weather or any other incident is a top priority.
Connors State is upgrading all areas of its campus security on all Warner and Muskogee campuses.
The campus alert system that has been put in place and implemented is where students, faculty, and staff sign-up by going to the C-Key system and adding their e-mail address and contact information.
“They have the opportunity to put in some emergency contact information,” said Dr. Ron Ramming, Vice President of Enrollment Management and Student Services. “In the event of an emergency we are able to contact and notify them by sending a text message, a voice message, or an e-mail to them anywhere. Eventually this system has the capability to send desktop alerts to our staff, library, and lab computers.
“If the student, faculty, or staff member has signed up with C-Key, everyone can be contacted. That is why we have had a big push for everyone to sign-up for C-Key. Obviously, we hope we never have to use it, but if we did, we can notify our students that there is something going wrong and give some instructions pretty quickly.”
According to Dr. Ramming, it’s an option for the students but as soon as they have provided the information to C-Key they receive the proper notification when necessary.
Dr. Ramming said the system won’t be used for general announcements such as “Don’t forget movie night on campus.”
“This system is on-line and every student who has signed-up with C-Key can be notified immediately in case of bad weather, campus intruder, or any other danger on any of the Warner or Muskogee campuses.
Along with the notification system, more lighting will be provided on the Warner Campus, according to Dr. Ramming. “We are going to add additional security lights in the future. We have just completed an analysis of our campus that’s going to tell us the most sufficient place for security cameras, which is coming in the near future,” said Dr. Ramming.
Dr. Ramming said this is the first step in a process that has been undertaken at Connors State to increase the safety and protection of each student on the Warner and Muskogee campuses.
“This whole process is to make the campuses as safe as possible,” said Dr. Ramming. “People also have to be aware of their environment and not put themselves in bad situations. But if they see themselves in a bad spot, they need to report it.”
Connors State is also being assisted by Oklahoma State University in the updating of safety procedures. OSU conducted a security audit on the Warner Campus, spent a day touring the campus, taking pictures and notes.
“We’ll get a comprehensive analysis back from OSU and from that, it will be the starting point for our security cameras on campus,” said Dr. Ramming.