How student cell phone use during a school crisis can be potentially dangerous.

Today, many students depend on cell phones. Cell phones are used by students to coordinate plans with their friends and family and obtaining rides home from after-school activities. In that context, cell phones most definitely should be available for student use on school property. The question is where and when may they make calls. The smartest move is to let all students keep their phones with them on campus, but to ban cell phone use during school hours. When it comes to school safety, cell phones have been used by students in a number of cases nationwide for calling in bomb threats to schools. These threats have been difficult to trace since they have been made by cell phones. The use of cell phones by students during a bomb threat, and in the presence of an explosive device, also presents a greater risk for potentially detonating the device as public safety officials typically advise school officials not to use cell phones, two-way radios, or similar communications devices during such threats. Also, experience in crisis management has shown us that regular school telephone systems become overloaded with calls during times of crisis. While we do recommend cell phones for school administrators and crisis team members as a crisis management resource tool, it is highly probable that hundreds (if not thousands) of students rushing to use their cell phones in a crisis would also overload the cell phone system and render it useless. Therefore the use of cell phones by students could conceivably decrease, not increase, school safety during a crisis.