The Chicago Tribune just posted this story about two University officials and our student body president Justin Randall  who tried to get students to sign up for the newly implemented Emergency Notification System by going old-school and getting their message out via chalk. Unfortunately, they picked a bad day since the rain has probably rendered most of their work unreadable by now.

The good news:

Between noon and 4 p.m. Monday, 203 students, faculty and staff signed up—well above the 50 a day the program had been averaging. That brought the total to 2,680; officials hope to get at least 50 percent of the 60,000-plus community members registered.

This couldn’t have possibly had anything to do with it. Nah.

Here’s an idea, since the piece of mind that would be gained by being on the list isn’t enough to motivate students to sign up, how about a little financial incentive. During the initial registration campaign, the University should come up with a lottery system that would award the winner(s) with a semester’s tuition waiver. The catch is that to win the prize, you have to be registered in the database. A student will receive a one-time only text message via the system with a secret code that you can take to an administrator. If the code and the name match, you’ve won.

Bad idea? Good idea? Got a better idea?