Understanding the New Emergency Notification Provisions of the HEOA

Timely Warning & Emergency Notification

Overview

Institutions are required to have a policy for emergency notification of the campus community upon “the confirmation of a significant emergency or dangerous situation involving an immediate threat to the health or safety of students or employees occurring on the campus.” 1 Timely warnings must be issued when crimes that are considered a threat to students and employees are reported to campus security or local police agencies.

Upon confirmation of a dangerous situation, emergency notification policy procedures should be followed if there is an immediate threat to the health or safety of students or employees occurring on campus. To avoid flooding recipients with messages, an institution following its emergency notification procedures is not required to issue a timely warning based on the same circumstances, but adequate follow-up information must be provided to the community as needed. In other words, both a timely warning message and an emergency notification message do not need to be issued in order to avoid inundating students and employees with similar messages.

The new regulations also include a provision that ensures sufficient information is disseminated to the campus in situations where the emergency or investigation is still developing. The new requirement states that an institution use its emergency notification system to provide follow-up information to the community as needed.

Not only are mass notification systems important tools for emergency messaging, but these systems also provide excellent platforms for disseminating follow-up information. For example, Inova OnAlert™ integrates with virtually all mainstream emergency communication systems and allows for real-time transmission of messages. Authorized users can designate message priority and override existing messages for follow-up information. The flexibility Inova OnAlert provides allows institutions the ability to easily communicate emergency and follow-up messages when every second counts.

1”General and Non-Loan Programmatic Issues; Final Rule,” 74 Federal Register 208 (29 Oct 2009), pp.55945.

Find out how to make Inova OnAlert Part of Your Emergency Notification Solution