A Texas college's mobile-phone alert advising students to evacuate went to college students across the country, including Arkansas, causing many confused students to call their campus police departments.
The first alert, issued about 8:20 p.m. Wednesday, was intended to inform students, faculty and staff about the possibility of a gas leak at Lone Star College-University Park campus in Houston. The alert did not identify the campus where the problem was.
"Email and text messages were sent to current students, along with online students and [prospective] LSC students who were also in the LSC database," a statement from Lone Star College said.
A University of Central Arkansas police spokesman said Thursday that colleges where some students received the alert included UCA, Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia, Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, Baylor University in Waco, Texas, the University of Oklahoma in Norman, the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Texas State University in San Marcos and Texas Tech University in Lubbock.
News media outlets reported that students at Harding University in Searcy, the University of Colorado in Boulder and Pennsylvania State University in State College also were among those who received the alert.
"Anyone that had a tie to us got [the alert]," Lone Star College spokesman Jed Young said Thursday.
That would include people taking online courses, those who participated in recruiting events and perhaps those who completed an application with Lone Star, Young said.
"That's all they would have needed to be in the [college's] database," he said.
Lone Star's statement said it "has former and online students throughout the state of Texas and across the country."
"We are in the process of reviewing our database and are reviewing alert procedures to ensure timely information is sent to those who need to receive it," the statement added.
Young said one problem was that the alert did not immediately specify which college sent it.
"In the spirit of being cautious, we would rather have the issue" than to have too few people notified, Young said.
UCA police spokesman Michael Hopper said the Texas school's first alert said: "Attention. There's an emergency on campus. Calmly evacuate all buildings. ... Move away from buildings and wait for further instruction."
UCA police fielded "a small number of calls," perhaps 12, from students who received the alert, Hopper said.
"We're not exactly sure how many students got it," Hopper said. "It certainly didn't go out campuswide."
Still, UCA put out an advisory on its Twitter and Facebook pages to advise people there was no emergency on the Conway campus, he said.
Hopper said UCA and Lone Star do not use the same vendor for emergency alerts.
State Desk on 10/07/2016