Office of the President

Speeches & Reports

Message to the Aggie Family Regarding Campus Safety

April 18, 2008

Howdy! As you all know, safety is a top priority here at Texas A&M. In fact, our goal is to ensure that all of you—students, faculty, staff and visitors—always feel safe and secure on our campus. To that end, we have put in place, and tested, an emergency warning system that we call Code Maroon. What I want you all to know is that we are not only committed to maintaining your safety and security, but we are also committed to the ongoing process of testing and identifying ways to make the system even better. Feeling and being safe must be a guaranteed part of your experience in Aggieland.

With that in mind, we will be conducting our third test of the Code Maroon emergency notification system on Tuesday, April 22nd. For those of you who have already participated in the test, the procedure will feel very familiar. Code Maroon subscribers will receive an email or text message and the test will be broadcast on our campus radio station: KAMU-(90.9) FM. We will also scroll the test message on our campus TV station.

The Code Maroon system is our most effective way to contact you quickly and efficiently with any health, safety or security-related emergency information. But, keep in mind that text messaging through Code Maroon is only one method of emergency notification. In the future, we plan to place emergency radios in every building on campus. And we will engage local radio and TV stations, Web sites and other media in the event of an actual emergency. When it comes to safety, we'd rather notify you too much than not enough.

We need all of you who have yet to sign up for Code Maroon to do so as soon as possible. The best way to achieve our goal—your safety—is 100% enrollment in Code Maroon. For those who still need to sign up, please go to codemaroon.tamu.edu. You'll have to use your Net ID and password, so if anyone needs assistance with that, please contact CIS Help Desk Central at 979.845.8300.

Also, as part of the upcoming test, we'll be asking those of you who participated in the last post-test survey to participate again. These surveys help us to compare the effectiveness of this test with the previous one, and to evaluate any areas that might still need improvement.

When you respond to the survey, it’s extremely important to note the Central Standard Time that you received the message and NOT the time you actually read it. In other words, we are measuring how quickly WE got the message to YOU.

Please do Texas A&M and yourselves a huge favor and sign up for Code Maroon now. Make sure your fellow Aggies do it, too. And finally, thank you for your participation in our ongoing tests of Code Maroon.

Be safe, and Gig 'Em.