Living in Valley City makes it easier for me to write my crisis communication research paper on this community. I lived on campus all of my freshman year and the first semester of my sophomore year. The last semester of my sophomore year I moved into an apartment on the north end of town. It would have been interesting to experience the flood while on campus but the experience of being off-campus was interesting and “good” as well. Living on campus would have given me the experience of being around my fellow students as the flood crisis played out. The communication would’ve been considerably different had I been in the dormitories. I would have been in closer contact with my professors, my fellow students, and the staff of the university. I would not have had to worry about finding a parking spot when all of the lots were closed due to flood preparation, I would not have had to worry about whether I was going to be able to get to campus to make it to my classes if they were even going to be held, and I would not have had to check my email every five minutes to determine what was happening around campus and the city because I could have heard it firsthand. Living off of campus allowed me to experience both the community side of the disaster and the university side of the disaster. I was in the midst of how the community was fighting the flood everyday and listened to the radio announcements every time I drove from campus to my apartment, my apartment to campus, or to any other destination around town. I was also completely intertwined with how the campus community was fighting the flood. I was on campus for classes and meetings so I saw how the campus prepared itself for fighting the flood; I received all the emails about what the town meetings were deciding, and the emails about how sandbag central needed MORE help even though more than half the town was probably there almost every day.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
What My Crisis Communication Project Will Be About
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I appreciate your final comment about how everyone was on the same page because no information was purposefully withheld thus making no one feel excluded or perpetuating rumors.
ReplyDeleteI feel this type of communication (the kind where people are left out of the loop) does just what you mentioned--perpetuates rumors, leaves people feeling slighted and suspicious, and makes everyone distrustful of any information that is shared publicly. I have seen it happen on a corporate cultural level when administration or leadership determine what they feel needs to be shared and what should not based on their read of the audience. Most times someone knows who tells someone else something and the rumor mill begins. Then those who were not told feel like they must not be trusted for some reason or that those in charge are hiding something.
So basically regardless of whether communication is open and honest, or hidden and slightly deceitful, the information gets out anyway. Might as well keep it open so the intended message is what is heard and passed about instead of the coffee-break rumor mill turning out varied interpretations of the story.
I too have to agree that Valley City did a great job of communicating with students. I receive constant updates from the alert system and even had someone call me when I hadn’t logged into my blackboard account to check to make sure I was okay.
ReplyDeleteI was afforded a different perspective regarding the emergency. I am completely on-line and live over two thousand miles away. I searched the internet to make sure classmates and professors were okay, read newspaper reports and watched the national news for updates on the community. I guess you could say it was like being at the skybox of a football game. You see everything yet you are disconnected and view everything from afar.
Glad to hear that you are safe and sound