How exactly do you do that?
I didn't advocate "locking the town down". I'm saying it would be better to have civil-defense-like sirens that can be heard throughout the area. People would have prior training on what to do when the alarm sounds: duck, cover---and stay hidden until the all-clear signal!
I was reacting to the university president's going on and on about how sophisticated their notice system is with all it's email, text message capability. It doesn't take a high tech system to warn people. Especially people who might be asleep or away from their device.
OTH, if the administrators are too dumb to even USE the system, it matters little what that system is.
How exactly do you do that?"
If you do a quick search on "William Morva", you will find that after he killed two people, they "locked down" VA Tech on the first day of classes. The difference is that William Morva killed a hospital security guard and a local Deputy. If I was a lawyer for one of the victims, I would be making this comparison.