By JAMES BELL
Hays Post

Last Tuesday, Fort Hays State University issued a safety advisory notifying the FHSU community of an alleged sexual assault that had occurred the previous Sunday. That alert reached more than 6,200 students in less than a minute, an analysis shows.

The Emergency Notification System is part of the FHSU Crisis Management Plan that allows FHSU to provide almost instantaneous alerts to the campus community.

Rave Mobile Safety, the contract agent for the system, provides diagnostics of alerts, which allow for later analysis.

Of the 6,913 individuals who have provided a telephone number to receive text alerts, 98 percent had been received within three minutes and more than 6,200 received the alert within a minute the analysis shows.

Of the 12,537 individuals who provided an email address for the system, 95 percent had received the alert over email within six minutes.

Telephone calls, typically the slowest delivery method, were placed to 11,648 individuals who had signed up for the phone alerts. While tracking how many received the calls is not possible, all calls had been placed within six minutes.

Members of the FHSU community can provide current information for the alert system in the FHSU central online platform, Tiger Tracks.

No further details about the alleged sexual abuse have been made available.