ASU
ASU Alerts and Advisories / Clery Timely Warning (Crime Alerts)
Arizona State University's ASU Alert is the university's emergency messaging system for communicating potentially life-threatening situations to the ASU community via email, text, push notification and social media, while non-life-threatening but operationally disruptive events are sent as ASU Advisories; separately, ASU Police issues Clery timely warnings as Crime Alerts for crimes that may represent an ongoing threat.
Read the official policyInstitution
Arizona State University
Public R1 · AZ
~80,000 studentsASU Alert
In the policy’s own words
What the policy says
ASU Alert definitionverbatim
ASU Alert messages are sent to communicate potentially life-threatening situations to the ASU community. An example may include a fire in a residential hall.
- — Sets the ASU Alert trigger at 'potentially life-threatening,' illustrated with a residence-hall fire.
ASU Advisory definitionverbatim
ASU Advisories are sent to communicate primarily non-life-threatening situations to the ASU community that may substantially impact university operations (i.e., road closures, building closures, etc.).
- — Defines the Advisory tier by operational impact rather than life-safety, the inverse of the Alert tier.
Channels and registration for life-threatening alertsverbatim
In the case of a life-threatening situation, all ASU students, faculty and staff will receive ASU Alerts via their ASU email. You may also receive text messages if you provide a mobile phone in your My ASU profile.
- — Email is the universal default for life-threatening alerts; SMS is an opt-in overlay keyed to the My ASU directory.
Crime Alert (timely warning) purposeverbatim
In order to heighten safety awareness, ASU Police will issue crime alerts to notify students, faculty, and staff of crimes that may represent an ongoing threat to the campus community.
- — Establishes 'Crime Alert' as ASU's branding for the Clery timely warning, scoped to crimes posing an ongoing threat.
At a glance
How this policy works
- When it activates
- ASU Alert: sent to communicate potentially life-threatening situations to the ASU community (e.g., a fire in a residential hall). ASU Advisory: sent for primarily non-life-threatening situations that may substantially impact university operations (e.g., road closures, building closures). Crime Alert (timely warning): issued when a Clery Act crime occurs within ASU's defined Clery geography and is determined to pose a serious or ongoing threat.
- Who decides
- ASU Police issues Clery timely warnings as Crime Alerts; Crime Alerts are created and published by the ASU Clery Determination group and the ASUPD Public Information Officer. The ASU Alert/Advisory emergency-messaging system is operated by the university's emergency-preparedness/public-safety functions.
- Timeliness standard
- ASU Alert is the instrument for immediate, potentially life-threatening situations; Crime Alerts are issued to heighten safety awareness of crimes that may represent an ongoing threat to the campus community, consistent with the Clery 'timely warning' standard.
- Emergency notification vs. timely warning
- Maps to Clery's two obligations: ASU Alert = emergency notification (immediate life-threats); Crime Alert = timely warning (serious or ongoing criminal threats within Clery geography). ASU Advisory is a non-Clery operational-disruption tier.
- Testing cadence
- ASU has historically conducted campus-wide tests of the ASU Alert and Advisory system (a January test was referenced when ASU adopted its mass-notification platform); precise current cadence was not reproduced verbatim in the consulted sources.
- Scope & limits
- ASU Alerts are reserved for potentially life-threatening situations; ASU Advisories cover non-life-threatening operational impacts. Crime Alerts are limited to Clery Act crimes occurring within ASU's defined Clery geography that pose a serious or ongoing threat. SMS delivery for alerts is contingent on a mobile number being present in My ASU; email is the universal channel for life-threatening alerts.
ChannelsSmsEmailPush NotificationTwitter XFacebookWebsite
Analysis
Reading the policy
Arizona State University separates its mass communications into two distinct lanes. The first is the ASU Alert and Advisory system: ASU Alert messages are sent to communicate potentially life-threatening situations to the ASU community (the university's own example is a fire in a residential hall), whereas ASU Advisories are sent to communicate primarily non-life-threatening situations that may substantially impact university operations, such as road closures or building closures. The dividing line is explicit and consequential — life-threat versus operational disruption — and both message types use the same delivery rails: text, email, and push notification via smartphones, plus social media.
Reach and registration differ by message type and urgency. In the case of a life-threatening situation, all ASU students, faculty and staff receive ASU Alerts via their ASU email, and recipients may also receive text messages if they have provided a mobile phone number in their My ASU profile. This means email is the universal default channel for life-threatening alerts, with SMS as an opt-in overlay tied to the self-service My ASU directory. ASU has also enhanced the alert/advisory system over time with new options and a mobile-app pathway via the ASU LiveSafe app.
The second lane is Clery compliance. ASU Police issues Clery timely warnings in the form of Crime Alerts to heighten safety awareness by notifying students, faculty, and staff of crimes that may represent an ongoing threat to the campus community. Per ASU's own description, Crime Alerts are created and published by the ASU Clery Determination group and the ASUPD Public Information Officer, and are disseminated using a variety of methods that include, at a minimum, mass email and posting to the ASU Police website, with information also potentially shared via social media and posted bulletins on campus. The Clery Act requires a timely warning when a Clery Act crime occurs within the university's defined Clery geography and it is determined the crime poses a serious or ongoing threat to the campus community.
On Clery framing, the architecture maps to both Clery obligations: ASU Alert is the emergency-notification instrument for immediate life-threats, while the Crime Alert is the timely-warning instrument for serious or ongoing criminal threats. ASU's police operations and Clery procedures are documented in the ASU Police Department Manual (hosted on PowerDMS) and the university's Annual Security & Fire Safety Report. Because the official asu.edu and PowerDMS pages return HTTP 403 to automated fetching in this environment, the verbatim excerpts below were captured from the official ASU CFO/Business-and-Finance page text as reproduced in search results and corroborated across multiple independent queries; remaining detail (system enhancements, testing) is paraphrased.
Takeaways
Key findings
ASU separates communications into ASU Alert (life-threatening emergencies), ASU Advisory (non-life-threatening operational impacts), and Crime Alerts (Clery timely warnings).
ASU Alerts and Advisories are delivered by text, email, push notification, and social media; for life-threatening alerts, email reaches all students/faculty/staff while SMS is an opt-in tied to the My ASU profile.
ASU Police issues Clery timely warnings as Crime Alerts to heighten safety awareness about crimes posing an ongoing threat within ASU's Clery geography.
Crime Alerts are created and published by the ASU Clery Determination group and the ASUPD Public Information Officer, disseminated at minimum via mass email and the ASU Police website.
The model maps to both Clery obligations: ASU Alert = emergency notification; Crime Alert = timely warning; ASU Advisory sits outside the Clery mandate.
Policy, meet practice
When this system actually fired
11 documented times ASU’s alert system was used, from the case archive.
+ 3 more in the case archive.
Provenance
Sources
- Official
- Official
- Clery ASR
- Official
- Clery ASR
Tags
policyemergency-notificationtimely-warningclery-actasu-alertcrime-alertpublic-r1arizona
Added 2026-06-21Updated 2026-06-21Via ingestion