In efforts to communicate important dates and deadlines to students, American River College has introduced a new text messaging news service for students called Beaver Text.

An email was sent out to all students’ school emails with information about Beaver Text, also known as BVR TXT.

Scott Crow, ARC’s communications and public information officer started this service as another way to disseminate information to students.

“The bottom line is communication … in the old days you could stick a flyer on campus and that was communication,” Crow said.

“Times have changed and we need to be flexible as far as finding ways to communicate information to students that is timely, that is in a way that respects their schedule and that gives them the opportunity to opt in and out,” added Crow.

The messages would include reminders about registration dates, deadlines for dropping classes and other school wide events.

Students interested in receiving the text messages need to email just their phone number and service carrier to [email protected].

He emphasizes that this new system is not related to the Los Rios Alert system which students sign up for when enrolling for classes to receive text messages in case of an emergency.

These text messages will not replace the official emails sent to students’ Los Rios Gmail  accounts from the school.

“We want to do whatever we can to deliver important information to students … it breaks our heart to hear students say things like ‘I didn’t know that was the deadline,’” Crow said.

ARC student Ashlee Green, major undecided, said that she thinks this is a good idea for the students on campus because she understands how busy their lives are.

“Some people need to be reminded of a lot of things with school, work and everything. Life just gets really hectic and you forget to check your email,” Green said.

The school would like to assure students that their phone numbers and information will not be shared with any third party agencies and says that they will not be spammed.

Crow estimates only five to 10 messages will go out to students in the remainder of this semester.

He is happy with the turnout of students who have responded, so far an estimated 460 students have opted to receive these messages.

“We want to see what the response will be, if this is something students are interested in … we are continuously looking for ways to improve our communication,” Crow said.