“We’re careful to keep this page to what affects Harvard only,” Wrinn says. “It’s not a news source for everything terror related. If it’s Harvard-specific, it’ll be on.”

He says that the University is balancing conflicting interests as best it can.

“The problem is that we want to maintain an open academic environment,” Wrinn says. “We need to have as much vigilance without turning it into something where terrorists win. We can’t go about daily life worried all the time.”

Harvard Business School Associate Professor Michael Watkins, an expert in emergency response, says that Harvard risks unnecessarily alarming people by sharing information about emergency planning.

“I can come up with the scariest things channeling my inner Stephen King,” Watkins says. “But I’m not sure it’s productive to have people imagine [that].”

But Watkins says there are legitimate security concerns to be factored into the University’s calculus.

“We don’t want public access to details of our plans to people who want to use the details against us,” Watkins says.

But he says a certain level of information should be shared with students because “knowledge does help reassure people.”

Vautin says it is “worrisome” when the community becomes extremely nervous.

“Hypervigilance is very destructive. It blows things out of proportion,” he says. “There’s a sense [in] not responding, that an institution is slow, when there is a great deal being worked on,” Vautin says.

Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) Chief Francis D. “Bud” Riley says that conveying extraneous information can also be harmful to the whole concept of an emergency management plan.

“You have to be careful that the information you are giving out is not sensationalized and gets emotions up,” Riley says. “If you do that one or two times, you lose credibility with warnings and people don’t listen to you.”

But he says that in the case of an actual emergency there would be no hesitation in spreading the news to the community.

“I’m not saying to filter what we do,” Riley says. “If there is a specific threat, I guarantee people would know. But in the absence of specific information it’s counterproductive to put [warnings] out all the time.”

Bridging Gaps