Learning the Hard Way.
Joy R. Hughes, Keith R. Bushey · The EDUCAUSE quarterly/EDUCAUSE quarterly · 2006
George Mason University has four campuses in Northern Virginia and 30,000 students, of whom 40 percent are graduate students. About 4,000 students live on campus. One of our campuses is just one mile from the Pentagon. Another of our campuses is a major center for biodefense research. Many of our staff and students have family members who work for the federal government in Washington, D.C., or for the Pentagon in Arlington. On September 11, 2001, when terrorists struck the World Trade Center Towers and the Pentagon, no one knew the extent of the damage, how many people had been killed or injured, or whether other targets would be hit. The communication systems being used by regional police and fire departments were not interoperable with each other or with the university’s system. Our only news came from television, which mainly showed a continuous repeat of the planes hitting the towers. Even if we had been able to get up-to-date information about what was happening in the region, we had no system set up to notify people via the Web, GMU-TV, or otherwise as to what was happening and what they should do. Although we tried to telephone key employees to initiate protective measures, often we could not reach them, either because we did not have their cell phone numbers readily accessible or because the cell phone towers on campus were insufficient to sustain the traffic. The disaster recovery plans for our major systems were out-dated and untested. We had no procedures to evacuate the camLearning the Hard Way