Colleges nationwide are starting to tap into popular social networking sites to supplement emergency response efforts. In addition to cell phone and e-mail alerts, some universities are considering using sites like Facebook and MySpace as another way to reach students when a crisis hits. "The reason we wanted to try out Facebook was because students are now getting information in nontraditional ways," said Maj. Jay Gruber, of the police department at the University of Maryland at College Park. "Social networks are what people are using, and we need to be able to leverage that technology for public safety." UNC officials and student leaders met over the summer and discussed the possibility of using social networking sites, but they are more focused with perfecting the existing emergency response system than exploring the new avenue. "We're trying to build pipelines for sharing information any way we can," said Mike McFarland, director of University communications. UNC student government leaders created a Facebook group last week to publicize Alert Carolina, the University's emergency notification system. There is no University-sponsored group yet. "We already have a great system in place," Student Body President J.J. Raynor said. "People don't trust Facebook all the time and not everyone is on there." Jess Kaplan, a senior psychology major, said that she would join a UNC emergency awareness group if it was created, but that she doesn't think it would alert students quickly enough to be effective. "I think text messaging is more efficient," said Kaplan. "If you go and sit down at a computer, it could be hours after the emergency happened." UM created an emergency awareness Facebook group last month. The group has photographs of emergency staff performing drills, videos of emergency management and tips on what to do in various situations. Social networking sites might not become the primary mechanism for alerting students, but they could be useful for following developments, especially because their sites can often handle more traffic than university Web sites. In the hours following the Virginia Tech shooting, the university Web site crashed because it was overwhelmed by the high volume of visitors. Right now, only UM campus police officials are allowed to post items on the group's main discussion area, but Gruber said he hopes to open up another discussion section for students to exchange information and resources in the aftermath of a crisis. However, that raises some concerns about the possibility of misleading rumors being circulated on social networking sites. The University of California at Los Angeles is working with MySpace developers on creating a similar program, but its site won't allow user comments. David Burns, emergency preparedness manager at UCLA, wants to reserve the MySpace page for official information only in order to prevent misinformation and the leaking of victims' names. "Once you open comments, you have to staff the page to monitor, edit or pull content from the site," Burns said. "We simply don't have the staffing to do that in a crisis." Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.