Madison College’s Public Safety will soon be switching their Wolfpack alert system over to a new vendor that will be activated via an app.

The app will allow students and faculty to customize their alerts with changing volumes and tones.  All alerts will be sent directly to the subscribers’ phones, emails, and all district phones as well as all district monitors located in public areas.

The current system has about 5,500 student subscribers out of 40,000 enrolled.  With the start of the app, the previous texting service will be cancelled.

“Its not available, unfortunately, for someone that doesn’t have a smart phone or an android,” said Jim Bottoni, Director of Madison College’s Public Safety.  “But again that’s a very small percentage of people so we had to make that decision and we did.”

As of July 1 the program will go live and students will be able to download the app and sign into the system using their school login ID and password.  The program will be tested for two months starting April 1 by 20 people at the college, five students and 15 others around the school.

Public Safety strongly urges students and faculty to use the Wolfpack alert system to stay safe and informed.

“We really do want to encourage people to use that service,” said Bottoni.  “It’s a service the college pays for, it’s at no charge to the students and anything that is an immediate risk or safety to the students or the community, the Wolfpack alert is sent out and we like to follow up later in increments of 15 or 20 minutes to update students on how that incident is occurring and what’s happening.”

For more information, contact Madison College’s Public Safety by calling (608) 246-6932, stopping by their office at the Truax campus located in room B1240 or by visiting their website http://madisoncollege.edu/safety.