On Valentine’s Day, at Northern Illinois University, a chilling message of a possible shooting on campus flashed on e-mails, the school’s official Web site and rang on telephones in dorms and offices. The first notice came at 3:20 p.m. and 11 others followed, giving more information over the next two and a half hours, according to news accounts.

The first alert told of a possible shooting and ordered students to get to safe areas. Posted at intervals of 10 to 20 minutes, other alerts confirmed the shooting and announced the cancellation of classes. Later ones announced an all clear and advised students to call parents, news reports say.

This was no test. It was the real thing. Stephen Kazmierczak, a 27-year-old former graduate student in sociology, had walked out from behind a screen and stepped in front of a lecture hall packed with 150 students in a geology class, according to university officials. The thin White man dressed in black whipped out a shotgun and two pistols and started firing, seemingly at random. He killed five and injured 16 students before commiting suicide.

It was an eerie repeat of the horrific shootings a year ago at Virginia Tech in which 33 people lost their lives. Except for one thing, that is. Like 1,000 or so universities shocked by the Tech slayings,NIUhad reviewed its information technology-based security system to warn the campus about life-threatening dangers. More updates are in store, but, in general, “various systems worked, and we got the information out as fast as possible,” says Jim Fatz, director of IT security and operations atNIU.

Indeed, this spring heralds a strange new world on campus. The Blacksburg shootings last April 16 generated new pressure to use information technology to greatly improve emergency notification. Upgrades at Northern Illinois, about 65 miles west of Chicago, apparently worked in limiting the number of casualties. Dr. John Peters, NIU president, told CNN that the school had reviewed andimproved its alert plans.