Less than 48 hours after the Virginia Tech massacre, a company called US Netcom tried to make money out of it.
And they weren’t subtle. With the dead unburied and the wounded still bleeding, this Missouri-based company came right out and claimed that what it sells could have prevented the shootings, and at a low price to boot. An April 18 company press release actually chided school president Charles Steger and followed with this:
“For $1 per student per year, services such as AllCall Notification (http://www.usnetcomcorp.com) could have provided VT with a method of crisis control capable of reaching every student far faster than email. It should have been in place as part of the school's emergency preparedness plan… There is a tragic lesson for every educator of every school-age student: AllCall or other notification services can save lives.”
US Netcom’s “outreach notification systems” customers include
several schools and organizations around the country. But you have to
seriously wonder about a company that would figure the publicity upside
is worth more than the anger and pain it creates by issuing this sordid
sales pitch.
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