University of Calgary investigating failure of emergency alert app

CALGARY (660 NEWS) — As police searched the University of Calgary campus for a suspicious person on Monday morning, many students were unaware of what was happening — even though they should have been alerted through an emergency app.

The campus did go into lockdown briefly, due to a student carrying a papier-mache art project that looked like an assault rifle.

But the sight of armed officers on the campus was distressing for some students, and the fact they were not alerted through the smartphone app is concerning to the Students’ Union.

“Students do rely on official channels of communication from the University to relay information about real or perceived threats to campus,” said SU President Jessica Revington.

The only other option for students and staff was to follow developments on social media.

She said it is fortunate it was a false alarm in this case, and hopefully, it serves as a learning opportunity.

“We do want to ensure that students and faculty and staff have accurate information in emergencies, and moving forward we hope that the University of Calgary takes this incident seriously as they are looking into what happened with the app and with their official channels of communication.”

As one of three stressful incidents to happen in the same day, Revington wanted to remind students there are ample resources to assist them if they are stressed.

“The SU Wellness Centre is a fantastic support for students that are feeling impacted or have some questions about the incident, or the aftermath of the incident. There are other resources on campus, such as the Faith and Spirituality Centre that students can reach out to in a time of crisis.”

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More information on the support can be found here.

A statement through Provost and Vice President (Academic) of the U of C, Dru Marshall, says:

“Both Campus Security and Calgary Police Service sent out notifications regarding the incident through social media. Unfortunately, there were some technical issues in sending out notifications using some of our UCalgary communication channels, which we are investigating to correct immediately.

The University of Calgary takes the importance of emergency communications very seriously, and we apologize for the lack of communication this morning due to technical difficulties.

The safety and security of all of our campuses is of utmost importance to us.”