One local college will keep its students informed in low and high-tech ways in case of an emergency.

"The first thing we do is sound the siren that we recently purchased and had installed on campus," said Ron Mooney, Westminster Campus Security Director.

Westminster college also directly informs registered students through text messaging.

"I joined because I thought it was a really good idea for us to know what's going on campus, when it's occurring," said Mikayla Healy, a senior at Westminster.

Despite the ease of registering for the text message system, not everyone has joined.  Westminster security said less than half of students are not registered with the alert system. One-third of all faculty, staff and students are not able to receive the alerts.

Although all students are not registered, most aren't too concerned. Healy said she is generally with somebody who is able to receive the alerts.

For those who can't text message, school security also sends out a mass e-mail. It's a three part process that takes officials less than a minute and a half to complete.

The system Westminster uses is called Textcaster, the same system used at KOMU.