It took the University of Alabama media relations team more than 50 minutes to officially respond to reports of a lockdown at Tutwiler on Sunday night. All students received was a four-sentence email that only addressed the issue at Tutwiler and while it was important, the response did not address the central cause of all the mayhem, which was the YouTube comment. Students did not get official clarification of UA’s recognition of those YouTube comment threats until the next day from UA Chief of Police Tim Summerlin.

I know I was not the only one who was extremely disappointed with our university officials for not giving us the information we needed in a 
timely fashion. Parents were 
distraught and tweeting to The Crimson White for answers, demanding more information and questioning whether or not their children were in danger. At a public university where we and our parents pay thousands of dollars for us to be educated, we would hope that money would be used to effectively update on us on any potential 
conflicts that could put our lives in danger. Through phone calls, texts and social media, we were left to piece together strands of 
information ourselves which in turn lead to a plethora of rumors that caused unrest and anxiety among the UA community.

I have had several discussions with students on campus who do not think the University is doing enough to make sure they are safe. Some 
students are making personal 
decisions to skip their classes because they are worried about their safety and some do not feel these threats are being taken 
seriously by the administration, which is a problem in itself. I understand several factors could have played into the late response Sunday night, including making sure actions were appropriately assessed and getting the most accurate information from UAPD, but that is no excuse for keeping the UA community in the dark for such an extended period 
of time.

With UA having one of the top public relations departments in the country, we would expect to have top quality officials on our media relations team who are capable of responding within minutes to ensure we were safe and keep us informed at any time of the day. A simple email or UA Alert declaring the University was aware of the problem and working to get more information would have sufficed, but we did not even get that in that important stretch 
of time.

We need to hold our administration accountable when it comes to effectively communicating with us and being transparent on the issues and events that directly affect our well-being and safety on campus. The emails that have been sent out have provided us with quality information, but they are not doing much to ensure the situation is being taken seriously and that our safety is guaranteed. I hope our officials will learn from this mistake and work to enact measures that will allow for information to be disseminated within a reasonable time period and on a large scale. I would not mind receiving a text message that alerts me to the fact that there is a situation on campus and that the University is working to solve the problem rather than being met with silence and relying heavily on text messages and social media to stay updated. I applaud the CW for keeping us all well-informed and making sure that students, faculty, parents and the world were updated with such accuracy and speed on 
Sunday night.

Vel Lewis is a junior studying public relations and political science. Her column runs biweekly.