Rafat wrote about schools and colleges getting a mobile alert system last week, and it seems many of them are now looking at doing so. “Since the shootings, more than 500 colleges have contacted Omnilert to ask about setting up text-message alerts, said Nick Gustavsson, company chief technology officer. At the 34 campuses where Omnilert already operates, tens of thousands of students have signed up in recent days”, reports USA Today. The chancellor of Florida’s state university system has asked the government for “$1.5 million for new emergency-alert systems that include text-message notices for the 11 state-run campuses”, and the article points out that these days students communicate via mobile phone rather than e-mail or dorm phone—95 percent of the 17.5 million full and part-time college students have mobile phones.