It was a crisp afternoon, with bright yellow and orange leaves falling at Oregon State University. Nineteen-year-old Kassie Barone walked down Campus Way, eyes fixed on her cell phone.

The sophomore business major checks her phone every time she leaves class because she usually has a text message or voice mail. "I live in a sorority, and not one girl doesn't have a cell phone. There's 70 of us," Barone said.

Cellular phones are everywhere on campus, and OSU wants to take advantage of the gadgets by using them as a warning system in emergencies - such as a gunman rampaging through campus.

The university plans to purchase software to simultaneously send thousands of text messages to students and faculty.

Such a system could be in place before the end of the school year, and OSU is considering products from several different companies, said Todd Simmons, assistant vice president for advancement.

"Post-Virginia Tech, the expectation is that we will do timely notification of critical events on campus, so we are working toward that," said Lt. Phil Zerzan, station commander for the Oregon State Police at OSU.

In April, a gunman killed 33 people at Virginia Tech in the worst mass shooting in American history. An investigating panel determined the school could have saved lives by warning those on campus that two students had been shot to death in a dormitory and that the murderer was still on the loose.

Two hours after those initial deaths, Virginia Tech officials sent out a campuswide e-mail about the situation. Twenty minutes later, the gunman started a massacre inside a university building.

While mass text messaging could save lives, the tricky part is getting students to opt into the system.

"You can't order them to take part in something like this," Simmons said.

Schools that already have implemented such systems are getting 50 percent participation at most, he added.

"I've heard about a dozen different universities" have programs in place similar to the one OSU wants to implement, including some in California, said Derek Abrams, an operating systems network analyst for OSU and the Oregon University System.

Four other state schools - Western Oregon University, Eastern Oregon University, Southern Oregon University and the Oregon Institute of Technology - may partner with OSU in purchasing a system, Abrams said.

The other Oregon universities are looking at purchasing similar systems, he added.

Besides cost savings, teaming up could provide benefits in a statewide emergency. Abrams said the system could cost as much as $250,000.

While text messaging could help, there is no simple solution, Zerzan said.

"I spend a lot of time analyzing what happened at Virginia Tech. If you could go back in time and ensure that everybody had two or three sentences, what would the message be? And would it save lives?" he asked.

Telling people to evacuate could actually force some into contact with trouble in certain scenarios. Having people shelter in place could be beneficial for most on campus, but leave others sitting ducks, Zerzan said.

Relying on one method of communication isn't the answer, either, Simmons said.

"We are communicating in so many different ways," he said.

The university already can send e-mails to every student's OSU-issued address - and students have the option of bouncing those to certain handheld devices - as well as activate speakerphones on campus.

OSU also is working on being able to scroll a message across every university computer screen.

"The real key is prevention," Zerzan said, "having a way to respond to students in crisis or that pose a threat to themselves and others."

Bobby Brett, 22, of Hillsboro said he thought the text message warning system was a great idea because about 90 percent of students have cell phones with texting capability.

"I think it would be awesome because everybody has a phone," said Larisa Benson, 22, of Salem. "Someone who doesn't have one, it's like, 'Ohmigod, they're weird.'"

Kyle Odegard covers Oregon State University. He can be contacted at kyle.odegard@lee.net or 758-9523.