To combat an "us versus them" mentality between students and police, the State College Police Department is reaching out through a new means: a social networking site.
The police are employing Twitter, a networking utility that allows friends to quickly update one another via cell phone, e-mail and instant message.
Those who choose to "follow," or receive updates from, the State College Police page can learn about parking restrictions, snow emergencies, speed detail enforcement areas, arrest statistics and activity reports from major events such as football weekends, State College Police Officer Todd Scholton said.
Scholton said he was intrigued by Comcast's use of the site to respond to questions from its customers. So Scholton researched other public service offices that use Twitter and discovered it was particularly effective for the Los Angeles Fire Department, which used the service to send emergency updates during a major downtown fire.
"It will appeal certainly more toward students and younger people, and people who are tech-savvy," he said.
Though the page is up and able to be "followed," Scholton said the project won't be fully completed until students return in the fall. This is especially important in terms of receiving feedback about what updates followers do and do not want to receive, he said.
Though not connected to Penn State's text-message alert system, PSUTXT, Scholton said the State College Police's Twitter site has some of the same goals.
PSUTXT is a free text messaging service
from the university that alerts students to emergencies and other important information. PSUTXT has about 41,000 active subscribers, Penn State spokeswoman Annemarie Mountz said yesterday.
"Their notifications are for totally different reasons than ours," Scholton said, but "the same idea is to get notifications out to people."
Matt Fine (freshman-division of undergraduate studies) said he might sign up to get the police department's updates.
"It's a possibility," he said. "Just to stay informed and make sure I get all the information I need."
If he has a car on campus in the future, Fine said he would want to know about special traffic patterns as well as snow delays. He said he also plans to sign up for PSUTXT.
Nicole Morgan (freshman-division of undergraduate studies) said if she signs up, she would want to receive different updates in different ways.
"I would use emergencies more through text," she said. "Maybe the rest of the stuff I could get through e-mail."
Through examining how other police departments use the service, Scholton said he began to decide what he did and did not want to do with the State College Police Department's page.
"Some do it better than others," he said. "The trick is not to constantly post but to post stuff that's useful."
Though posts are limited to 140 characters, two to three officers maintaining the site will be available to answer users' questions, Scholton said. He estimated posts would occur "a couple times a week."
Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton also used Twitter effectively in their campaigns, Scholton added. As of press time yesterday, Obama's Twitter site had about 48,000 followers.
"I'm hoping to get more than that," Scholton said.
