Behind TU’s emergency alerts
By Zhane Amin, contributing writer
As part of Towson University’s dedication to public safety, alerts are sent out about emergencies near or on campus. TU’s Police Communications Center is responsible for sending the emergency safety messages whenever there are urgent safety concerns on or near campus.
Alerts range from general safety alerts to active safety threats.
Emergency alerts include: critical threats for active safety threats, severe weather events, school closures due to emergency, traffic advisories and messages that are required to be sent under local, state or federal law. These alerts are sent to registered emails and by text message.
Safety alerts notify the campus of situations that do not require immediate action or attention, such as traffic advisories, off campus incidents and general safety messages.
According to TUPD Chief Charles “Joe” Herring, safety alerts are not required and are sent to university-issued emails.
“The system has been in place since I’ve been here, I’ve been here 23 years and Clery was in a different form. The Clery Act was applicable college campuses 23 years and it’s evolved over the years and our system’s evolved,” Herring said.
The Clery Act requires colleges and universities to report campus crime, support victims of violence and outline their safety policies and procedures to the public.
The Clery Act also outlines different minimum procedures for a safety alert or an emergency notification. Such as how much information is put out in the alert, immediate action to be taken or how the message is distributed.
“When we send out a notification for an imminent emergency on campus it’ll go out across a lot of different mediums and it’s redundancy, in case someone doesn’t have their phone, doesn’t see a text message, is somewhere where they can’t hear or are hearing impaired,” Herring said.
Since the Fall 2024 Semester started the Office of Public Safety has issued alerts for one incident.
“I like the alerts because they accomplish their intended purpose of informing me of happenings in the area, but that subsequently makes me wary of venturing off campus,” said sophomore Maddie Braswell.
Students, faculty, and staff are automatically enrolled into these messages and are required to keep an updated phone number on their TU account to be signed up for the alerts. Parents of TU students, members of the surrounding communities and other non affiliated individuals are allowed to register to receive these alerts using the TU Emergency Text Alert Sign-up, which can be found on the Community Safety Dashboard through the university website.
