notes from the desk Students scam the evacuation plan

Author: Tamara Hilmes

As I sat down in Atwater one morning with my bowl of Rice Krispies and Captain Crunch, I noticed something strange. No, I am not talking about my habit of mixing cereal - that is not strange, just plain delicious. I am referring to the little sign standing in the middle of the table. The little plastic holder-thingy that, a few weeks ago, contained the "Think Outside the Bottle" propaganda, now holds a new notice that reminds students to fill out their "Personal Evacuation Plan" on BannerWeb before they are able to register for spring semester classes. What struck me as strange, though, was not the new sign, but rather that the words "bird flu" had been crossed out and replaced with "zombie outbreak." Obviously, at least one student has not been taking the new evacuation plan mandate very seriously, but I do not think they are alone. Just as this "28 Days Later"-themed prank has spread across the tables in the dining halls (I spotted one in Ross just the other evening), so has a general disregard for the evacuation plan spread among students.

John Emerson addressed the difficulty in finding ways to make students take the plan seriously in last week's issue of The Campus. One way they have attempted to do this is by making the process "as painless as possible." And it's true. Having undergone the process of entering my evacuation plan, I can honestly say that it really did take under three minutes to complete. I simply had fill out the name, address and phone number for two different emergency contacts. No big deal. But herein lies the problem - because of the simplicity of the process, students think of the emergency plan as just that - "no big deal," hence the references to zombie outbreaks.

When students enter their emergency contact information into BannerWeb, they are able to enter virtually any address to prevent their account from being blocked come registration day. The College's only means of checking that students have entered legitimate plans is by mailing a notice out to the addresses entered into the system. How then, I wonder, will the College ensure that students have actually entered a legitimate plan? For instance, I recently heard one student telling another that he had chosen to enter his friend's address as one of his two required locations. The only problem with this scenario is that his friend lives in Israel. While there is a good chance that should Middlebury be struck by bird flu, Israel would be far enough away to avoid danger, it seems unlikely that this student would be able to fly across the world at a moment's notice should he be required to put his plan into action. In this instance, this student's plan could be deemed worthless and a complete waste of the five minutes he took to enter it into BannerWeb. The catch - he will still be perfectly able to register for spring classes. And I do not think that he will be the only one who enters an unrealistic plan and gets away with it.

So I have to ask, what is the point? Why should the College bother mandating a personal emergency plan if the plans that students enter are going to prove completely irrelevant? If the College is going to instigate this type of initiative, they should have a more concrete means of backing it up than by simply mailing letters. In order to make this plan legitimate, the College would have to check on every address entered and ensure that it is within a reasonable radius from the campus, and that the student could actually get there. It is simply not feasible for the Committee to check 2,350 plans, which brings us to my real point. The idea of having students form a concrete plan for where they would go should a pandemic strike is a good one, but is it really necessary to have each student enter this plan into BannerWeb? I really do not think that if bird flu struck the campus tomorrow (knock on wood) that anyone would be left behind. If I possessed a car or a home somewhere on the East Coast, I cannot imagine that I would deny passage or shelter to any displaced classmate, even if they were that kid who took the last of the Lucky Charms in Atwater or showed me up in my last Lit discussion. Hopefully, each of us can find someone on this campus who would take pity on us and save us from contracting bird flu or Mad Cow Disease. If this is not the case, however, then all that the College has managed to accomplish with this emergency plan is to lower students' self-esteem by pointing out that they have absolutely no friends, and that is just sad.

Tamara Hilmes is a Local News editor from Lawrence, Kan.