When a shooting at Los Angeles Valley College left one man dead on Jan. 25, where did students turn to for information? How reliable is a stranger’s Facebook or Twitter update?

As part of an effort to keep students on campus informed and safe, the EC Police Department has begun using a new program known as NIXLE in order to bring alerts to students in real time over their phones.

“This program is free, it doesn’t cost anybody anything, so what we’d like is for people to be aware of this system, and sign up for it, which is really, really easy,” Michael Trevis, EC chief of police, said.

NIXLE will provide students at EC with two different services. The first, known as alerts, will be sent to students in cases of imminent danger, and will inform them of the safest way to respond to the situation, such as through evacuation or taking shelter, Trevis said.

The second service, known as advisories, will be aimed at keeping students informed of less immediately dangerous circumstances that are still of interest to them.

“A few weeks ago, we had a helicopter circling the school, so we sent out an advisory letting people know hey, you know what, there was a burglar that the Torrance Police Department is looking for over in the residential area off of Crenshaw, across from the 7-11,” Trevis said. “It was in the homes over there, but alot of our students park over there, so we were just letting them know there’s an advisory out.”

According to an email distributed by ECPD, signing up for the service is a simple process. Students can join either by texting “ECCPD” from their phones to the number 888777, or online at www.nixle.com.

However, some students like Brandon Willoughby, 29, radiologic technology major, seem reluctant to give the new service a chance.

“I probably wouldn’t sign up for something like that; it sounds like it’d be an overload of texts,” Willoughby said. “Maybe if it was just for the emergency stuff, but it sounds like they’ll be sending us a bunch of little stuff too, and I don’t need that.”

Instead, Willoughby said he’d be more likely to find out pressing information through word of mouth.

“I really only have a basic cellphone. I try to stay as disconnected as possible,” he added.

Similarly, Freddy Gonzalez, 18, undecided major, currently has no plans to subscribe to the service.

“I probably wouldn’t find out until either someone told me the next day, or I saw a bunch of people screaming and running for their lives,” he said.

Trevis hopes students won’t wait to rely upon screaming to learn of emergencies and emphasized that the service will only be used to disseminate critical information.

“Campus police does not send text messages via the NIXLE system unless it’s a campus safety matter that our community need to know about,” he said. “This system allows all of our campus community to be informed and stay safe.”