Have no fear! WarnMe is here…
So, I’m pretty sure you guys and gals have all received the nerve-racking, spine-chilling, blood-curdling text from the UC Davis WarnMe system notifying us that there is no emergency. I just want you all to take a brief second to laugh at this foolery.
When there is indeed a threat to the Davis community, the so-called WarnMe system waits until the suspect successfully disguises himself as a “street preacher” to let us know that yet another house has been robbed and the suspect has successfully escaped to the next house of interest.
If the WarnMe system won’t give us sonic-speed intel on emergency information, like during the recent shooting — which I found out about from the Mango Flower chef on Anderson Road, by the way — then maybe UC Davis should change its emergency protocol to something a bit more useful.
For instance, instead of warning the students that “campus will remain closed on Martin Luther King Jr. Day,” warn them that “Buses A-Z will be 15 minutes late all week due to a three-bike collision on A street and Russell.”
Or, “Attention students who like to drink ‘clean’ water: Wellman, Hart and Giedt Halls currently have the green filter level. Drink up!”
Or maybe, “For students who need to relieve stress, please come to the quarterly primal midnight yodel the Sunday before finals.”
Finally, to restate what I forgot to say above, the WarnMe system is very much needed. It just has to switch from texting us about expired local crime reports to texting us positive affirmations like, “Today and every day my thirst for learning is alive and well in me.”
Written by: Hilary Ojinnaka —hiojinnaka@ucdavis.edu
(This article is humor and/or satire, and its content is purely fictional. The story and the names of “sources” are fictionalized.)
