BLACKSBURG -- When Virginia Tech wanted to alert students to developments in a recent campus manhunt for an accused double murderer it relied on e-mail, the Web and messages sent to dorm phones. One method that was not available: sending text messages to cellphones. That could change.

University officials are considering following the lead of Penn State University and other schools that use text messaging to stay in contact with students for whom even e-mail is becoming passe.

The manhunt in Blacksburg for William Morva, which led to the evacuation of Squires Student Center and the first day of classes being canceled, is an extreme example of the type of situation that Tech officials would like to be able to notify students about on their cellphones.

"We will certainly be investigating other kinds of communications vehicles," Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said, though he cautioned that a text-messaging system was still a "blue sky idea" that would take investigation to implement.

Hincker said he became interested in such a system after seeing news accounts of the text-messaging program Penn State launched this school year.

About 350,000 people subscribe to Penn State's e-mail news service, which includes sports items. Working with e2Campus, a division of Leesburg-based Omnilert LLC, Penn State upgraded its system so subscribers can choose to be updated by text message.

"This acts as a complement development based on the rising trend of text messages," said Penn State spokesman Tysen Kendig. "We're finding more students are using cellphones to talk to each other than e-mail."

Kendig said Penn State officials are more selective about what they send by text message.

"It's not like e-mail in that we can send an unlimited number of text messages without any additional cost on their end," he said.

Each text message can cost the recipient 10 cents or more.

E2Campus recently started working with Florida A&M and the Universities at Shady Grove, which are part of the University System of Maryland, said Nick Gustavsson, chief technology officer for Omnilert, which developed its technology in 2004.

A competing company, New York-based Rave Wireless, launched its service last year. Its system differs in that, along with allowing text alerts, it enables college police departments to monitor the locations of students, both on and off campus.

The technology is in place at Montclair State University in New Jersey, where incoming students are required to have special, global-positioning-satellite enabled phones that can be tracked.

The school only monitors a student's whereabouts when he or she activates that feature on their phone, said Lynn Schwartz, a consultant who acts as spokeswoman for Rave Wireless.

Other Rave Wireless customers include the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of South Florida, according to the company Web site.

Security on Campus Inc., a nonprofit that argues for stronger campus security measures, favors the use of text message alerts.

"Students are text messaging left and right, and it's one of the quickest ways to get key information to them on an immediate basis," said S. Daniel Carter, the organization's senior vice president. "It keeps students safer. It's that simple."

Hincker, the Tech spokesman, said his school is launching a stripped-down version of its Web site that will be easier to access though hand-held devices. But disseminating news that way still depends on users choosing to access the site, which limits its effectiveness in emergencies, compared with text messaging.

Hincker said the new site could be online as early as this week at mobile.vt.edu.