Classes were interrupted Wednesday as part of a national test of the Wireless Emergency Alert system. The noise that indicates severe weather or an Amber Alert, carried significant weight  for the first test of the Presidential Alert system.

“I was at Business Symposium for ISM and all of the sudden my phone started buzzing,” senior Kaitlin Shin said. “It was really weird because I turned my emergency notifications off, as well as my AMBER alerts off, so I was kind of confused on why I was getting the notification. But, it said that it was a test from the national government basically, so I was kind of confused but I think I understand why my phone went off even though I have it set to not go off.”

According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the alert is intended to give the President access to the public during a national emergency. Wednesday’s test involved sending a text to Americans from coast to coast, and interrupted some classes on campus. 

“It was kind of unnerving,” biology teacher Richard Sabatier said. “All the sudden there is just this big [noise], but it was pretty funny. We all kind of laughed about it and then got back to what we are doing.”

Despite the disturbance in the learning environment, some students believe the importance of the alert system is worth its noisy test.

“I think a lot of people find them annoying just because your phone goes off and it makes this huge annoying sound,” Shin said. “But I think that it’s important that we do receive these notifications, as annoying as they are, because in some cases, one day, we will get that alert and it could actually keep us out of danger or save someone’s life.”

Sabatier also thinks the benefits of being in the know in an emergency outweighs the small interruption of the alert’s test.

“It’s important that if something were to happen everyone would be aware of it if it was something dangerous or something important,” Sabatier said. “30 seconds of inconvenience is worth knowing something.”