The facts: Talley Student Center construction has required road closers for the safety of its workers. The road closures have caused unexpected detours and buses to stop providing service on Dunn Avenue, Morrill Drive and Faucette Drive from 6:30 p.m . to 6 a.m .

Our opinion: While the transportation office gets out the information on planned delays and road closers, for some reason we are not getting it. We need a system more in our face, something in the same vein as Wolf Alert.

Nobody likes walking into class 10 minutes late, minus the few who make it their style. The professor pauses their lesson and the class collectively focuses their attention on you. It’s not a great feeling, but with recent road closings and bus route cancelations this feeling is becoming all too common for commuting students.

Talley Student Center construction has required road closers for the safety of its workers. The road closures have caused unexpected detours and buses to stop providing service on Dunn Avenue, Morrill Drive and Faucette Drive from 6:30 p.m . to 6 a.m . These delays account for the unexpected number of people you find coming into your classes late; however, these road closures should not result in the lateness of students.

For the most part, traffic delays around campus are known in advance. In the case of the Talley Student Center, the plans to close the roads were made weeks in advance. For other road closures around campus, plans must be made at least five days in advance. The impact these road closers have on students has nothing to do with poor planning, it has to do with the disconnect in how this information is presented and how commuters receive this information.

The information on road closures and transportation issues in and around campus is widely available to the student body. Christine Klein, public communication specialist for the transportation office, said details on transportation changes are sent up to 70 list serves (you can join on NCSU Transportation’s website) which are disseminated around campus, updated on the transportation website, posted on sandwich boards around campus and updated on the Transit Visualization System. Obviously, the message is out there, its just somehow missing some of us.

We need a system that is more in your face about traffic changes. We need a system that will reach the commuters, what Klein calls “the hardest group of students to get to.” An adoption of a system similar to the Wolf Alert system could be a step in the right direction.

The actual Wolf Alert system could not be used for notification of traffic delays, as its use is confined to Campus Police. Traffic delays, while cumbersome, are not emergencies. Major Jon Barnwell did shed light on one approach that the transportation office could adopt to better reach students: using Facebook. Barnwell said that Campus Police have “just now started pushing out pertinent information [through Facebook] on a regular basis.”

The transportation office could send a Facebook message out to all of its subscribers and, if they have a smart phone, they’d receive it the same as a text. Barnwell said this method of notification is still in its infancy and conclusions on its effectiveness could not be made. However, anything that keeps you from walking into class 10 minutes late is worth a shot.