St. Thomas students and staff received an incorrect email alert from the university’s new emergency notification system concerning a campus lockdown order Friday night.
The initial email ordered a lockdown for the St. Paul campus despite the cause being a shooting at the 700 block of Hennepin Avenue near the downtown Minneapolis campus.
The email alert, sent at 6:45 p.m., began: “A campus lockdown has been activated for the St. Thomas St. Paul campus due to an active threat in the area. All exterior doors to ALL buildings are secured. Faculty, staff, and students may still enter using their university ID cards.”
An updated email sent at 6:57 p.m. clarified that the lockdown applied to “MPLS CAMPUS ONLY.” Public Safety Director Zachary DuBois sent a separate email to students and faculty clarifying the message after the all-clear was given at 7:50 p.m.
“Due to our team transitioning to a new alert system, the email notification included an incorrect location,” DuBois wrote. “However, the text message and push notification to the app displayed the correct information. We understand this may have caused confusion, especially for those on the St. Paul campus, and we sincerely apologize for any concern this may have caused.”
Minneapolis Campus and Emergency Manager Brian Rich wrote in an email to The Crest that the miscommunication was caused by “staff error only” and was corrected shortly after.
The lockdown order was issued Friday after Minneapolis police responded to reports of a shooting at 6:35 p.m. at the 700 block of Hennepin Avenue, according to a police report obtained by The Crest. Officers arrived after the shooter had fled the scene and found three men with non-life-threatening gunshot wounds, according to the brief.
No arrests had been made as of Saturday morning.
Students and staff received a test email from the new alert system, SafeZone by CriticalArc, on Wednesday, which stated that emergency emails would come from the SafeZone system moving forward.
In an Undergraduate Student Government meeting on Sept. 11, Vice President of Student Affairs Karen Lange said that students would not see any difference in the alert system but added that the new company offers a feature in the CriticalArc app that will allow students to update public safety on their location when walking at night.
If public safety officers do not hear from a student after their estimated time of arrival, they will follow up and investigate. Lange said the app was in its beta testing phase as of Sept. 11.
“It’s a new feature, and we really want all of you to use it, and we really want you to encourage others to use it because it’s a great opportunity to stay in contact with our public safety, which is here 24 hours, so you can feel safe on and around campus,” Lange said.
Kevin Lynch can be reached at lync1832@stthomas.edu.
