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TCU
crisis hotline available for notice of class cancellations TCU’s new crisis hotline will enable students, faculty and staff to check the status of potentially canceled classes or a closing of campus. Kelli Horst, university director of communications, said students can dial extension 5604 to see if classes have been canceled and if inclement weather or an unexpected emergency occurs. This offers another way, besides the TCU home page, e-mails, and media reports to inform students of the up-to-the-minute situation on class cancellations or special scheduling, she said. A toll-free number is also available for students, parents and alumni to use from off-campus at (866) 321-7428. Horst said the Office of Communications will start actively promoting the hotline this semester. “We’re going to meet with folks in residential services to see if we can post the (phone) number around residence halls as well as other areas around campus,” Horst said. “Hopefully it will be visible and students will know, now that it’s set up.” Horst said the university first thought about the idea of a hotline two years ago when a tornado hit downtown Fort Worth. Marlie Corzime, a senior business management major, said she lives off-campus and came to school sometimes only to find out that classes were canceled. Corzime said one of those instances was when she came to campus Sept. 11, when many schools across the country, including TCU, had canceled classes. Tracy Syler-Doctson, assistant director of communications said Sept. 11 was not a catalyst for the development of the hotline. “We had been in the process of developing the crisis communication plan,” Syler-Doctson said. “It was already in the works.” Syler-Doctson said the university needed an effective way to communicate in any type of emergency situation. “We look for tools that will help us accomplish this,” Syler-Doctson said. “One of the tools we feel would help us is to have this established hotline that we would have control over.” David Lessner, a sophomore kinesiology major, said the hotline will be valuable to him even though he lives on campus. “It would be a good idea because when there’s a chance of snow, I always have to get up early and look on the Internet,” Lessner said. “It’d be nice to have a phone you could call or a person you could talk to or something to tell you that school is canceled.” Sam
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