Handling The Tornado - Blog 11

    This past Tuesday UNT students experienced the unorganized crisis management of UNT. At 2:30 p.m. the Denton community became very aware of the severe weather heading its way. In severe weather incidents in the past UNT has issued an Eagle Alert that goes out to all the students and registered emails and numbers informing them of the safety concerns and any important information/announcements the school makes. By 3 p.m. when the storm was expected to hit the students had not received any form of alert.

    What does this have to do with PR? It has everything to do with it. Right then in the moment UNT was creating a crisis management good or bad to be determined in the end. But as PR agents we are told to always handle the situation before it explodes. It’s easier to clean up a small mess than it is to clean up a big one. UNT had the mentality of go big or go home. The persona they were giving off to the students and the students’ families was that the safety and accurate information for the students was not the main priority. UNT is one of Texas’ largest commuter schools.

    Some students on campus were lucky to hear the tornado sirens and knew to make it to a safe building until it was over, but there were many classes going on that had no knowledge of the sirens or the issue going on. UNT not only had poor communication to the students but also equally poor communication to the faculty and staff. There were many offices located in parts of the building that have absolutely no access to information. Whether it was because UNT determined they were in a safe spot or not it would have beneficial to the teachers to know the severity so that they could inform their own students not to make the trip to Denton.

    Poor communication never leads to good PR. It gives PR people a harder time having to deal with it later. UNT had however posted several comments on their official Facebook site. It was a nice touch for the students that had access to the internet but this is not the normal form of communication between students and UNT. We students are used to the Eagle Alerts as well as the teachers. The school doesn’t promote the use of non-school related internet activity in class so the students that were in class really didn’t know to check Facebook or to even go straight to the official UNT Facebook.

    Of course there were comments on the warnings from students and parents. UNT was being accused of not caring about the safety of its students. TWU just down the road from UNT had sent an alert to all the students informing them of the cancellation of classes by 2:35 p.m. The one good thing the UNT did do throughout this entire mess was that they were smart enough to comment back in reply to the negative concerns. It would have looked worse if they had ignored them all together. But, the heat they received from upset people will be around for a while and something that UNT will need good publicity and PR for. Needless to say they did not handle the tornado well.

Source:
http://www.facebook.com/northtexas