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Recent outbreaks of violence on college campuses around the country have prompted administrators nationwide to reevaluate the safety measures in place to protect their faculty and students. Princeton has taken laudable steps since the Virginia Tech shooting, most notably by implementing an emergency SMS system. It is troubling, however, that so few students — particularly upperclassmen — have availed themselves of this safety mechanism by providing the University with their cell phone numbers. Text messages could instantly inform thousands of people of emergencies on campus, but the University must have your phone number in order to contact you.

The University currently asks for cell phones numbers through SCORE, but there is no system in place to encourage compliance. If students, aware of their options, refuse to provide their numbers or do not have a phone, it is certainly their prerogative to withhold information. Without written assurance prominently displayed in SCORE — that the University will not use private information for any nonemergency purposes — students cannot make an informed decision. Students may, rationally or not, be concerned about their information being used for fundraising after graduation or other similar ends. Surely the University is not as callous as to engage in such a practice, but it could certainly make its policies regarding student contact information clearer and more accessible. Ideally, entering cell phone information would be mandatory for academic year registration and opting out would include checking a box affirming that one has read and understood the University's policy and the risks involved in not providing the information.

In an editorial last spring, this board urged for the development of even more drastic public notification systems than those in places today, but we cannot expect the University to take greater care for us than we do of ourselves. That some students may have consciously decided to withhold their numbers from the registry is startling, and we can only stand in awe of their myopia and naivete. If students are unwilling to cooperate in this, the simplest of ways, then they may find that they are only as safe as they deserve to be. And that would be a pity.