Students mingle on the College Green at Brown. The university would alert students to an emergency, such as a gunman, with a siren.

THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL / Andrew Dickerman

PROVIDENCE — With the campus shootings at Virginia Tech still fresh in college administrators’ minds, Brown University plans to install a siren warning system that would blast the campus with loud alerts in case of an emergency.

The sirens, which would be installed in three locations across campus, would be loud enough to be heard around the area, and have voice capability so that information about the nature of the emergency could be broadcast, according to Walter Hunter, vice president for administration.

“Near the siren, it’s more than 100 decibels, and it decreases as you get further,” Hunter said. “We’re leaning in the direction of a tone that would pitch up and stay at a constant frequency for something around 30 seconds, give or take, and then pitch back down.”

But Brown’s campus is interwoven with scores of large single-family and multi-family houses, and neighbors worry that the sirens might be used for more than life-threatening emergencies. They fear that the blaring of tests and non-emergency situations would be disruptive to residents across the East Side.

“What kind of an incident would be the threshold for them to use this?” wondered William G. Touret, president of the College Hill Neighborhood Association. “If they hit their fundraising goals, would that qualify?”

Hunter said that only dire, immediate “emergencies presenting imminent danger to individuals on campus – an active shooter or a large chemical release” would qualify.

Brown wants to install the system this fall, but needs the city to sign off first.

Democratic City Councilman Seth Yurdin, who represents Fox Point and part of College Hill, drafted an ordinance that will be introduced at tonight’s City Council meeting that regulates how any warning system could be used, and puts it under the authority of the Providence Emergency Management Authority.

As a safety measure, a siren system could be useful, Yurdin said, but the university must ensure that residents know how and why the school is using the sirens.

“It’s really important to keep students safe but at the same time we have to make sure that whatever’s used has the corresponding procedures to keep the neighborhood in the loop,” Yurdin said.

Democratic Councilman Cliff Wood, who represents the rest of College Hill, is still looking for more information before he decides to support a siren system. Is the university also trying other, less intrusive methods of alerting students of danger, he wondered?

“It depends, you have to balance the convenience versus the safety, and I don’t really know,” Wood said. “I’m respectful of Brown’s diligence and their intention to be safe. On the other hand, I know other universities have tried other methodologies. I don’t know if this is exactly what is needed, if it’s overkill, if there’s better methodology.”

Yurdin said that Brown is also adopting other methods of getting in touch with students, like emergency e-mails, text messages and mass voice-messages to their phones. But phones and their users can be fickle, and a loud siren system is guaranteed to reach everyone on campus.

His ordinance would require that Brown pay for periodic public outreach to inform area residents about the siren system, and provide a plan for implementation to the Providence Emergency Management Authority. It would require a minimum of one audible test annually.

Yurdin and Wood said that Brown first approached them early in the summer, and that there were several meetings between council members, school officials, and the Providence Emergency Management Authority.

Neighborhood Association President Touret said that he only learned of the plan yesterday afternoon, and that Brown should have involved the area residents more fully.

“There ought to be a very extended period of time during which all potentially affected organizations, individuals, whatever, can discuss it,” he said. “At first glance this sounds like a poor idea given the density of the residential neighborhoods around Brown and the fact that Brown is embedded in several residential neighborhoods.”

The April campus shootings at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., which claimed 32 lives, have led to security changes for colleges across the nation. Last week, Rhode Island College unveiled a system that sends crisis alerts by cell phone and e-mail to students and faculty.

Hunter said that Brown has been planning on upgrading its system for some time.

“We were talking about this before Virginia Tech, but clearly the Virginia Tech incident heightened our awareness,” Hunter said.

dbarbari@projo.com