BC
Boston College Emergency Notification System (Communication)
Boston College's Emergency Notification System, administered by the Office of Emergency Management, sends campus-wide emails and text messages to students, faculty, and staff and pushes alerts through the BC Safe mobile app, with the app integrated into BC's Rave Alert system; website posts, social media, and an emergency information line round out the channels.
Read the official policyInstitution
Boston College
Private R1 · MA
~15,000 studentsBC Safe / Rave Alert
In the policy’s own words
What the policy says
Emergency Notification System channelsverbatim
The Boston College Emergency Notification System sends out campus-wide emails and text messages to Boston College students, faculty, and staff as well as to the BC Safe Mobile App.
- — Exact wording returned identically from the official BC Office of Emergency Management Communication page across multiple searches; the page itself returned HTTP 403 to direct fetch in this environment.
Website and social media as additional channelsverbatim
Postings to websites and social media pages are used as well.
- — Confirms web and social media (@BC_OEM on X, bcemergency on Facebook) as supplemental alert channels.
BC Safe app integration with Rave Alertreconstructed
BC Safe is integrated with BC's Rave Alert Emergency Notification System and notifies anyone with the app of the emergency alerts sent out to faculty, staff, and students.
- — Identifies Rave Mobile Safety (Rave Alert) as the underlying vendor. Marked not verbatim because the exact sentence was surfaced from a 403-blocked page and could not be re-verified character-for-character against a second identical source.
At a glance
How this policy works
- When it activates
- Boston College activates its Emergency Notification System for emergency situations affecting the campus; consistent with the Clery Act, emergency notifications are issued upon confirmation of a significant emergency or dangerous situation involving an immediate threat to health or safety, while Crime Alerts (timely warnings) are issued for Clery-reportable crimes that pose an ongoing threat.
- Who decides
- The Office of Emergency Management is responsible for managing Boston College's emergency communications and preparedness; the specific activation authority (individual/rank) is documented in BC's Annual Security Report rather than on the public emergency-management pages, so it is not quoted here.
- Timeliness standard
- BC's public materials describe the capacity to communicate rapidly with all students, faculty, and staff via email, text, and the BC Safe app during an emergency; specific Clery timeliness language ('without delay' / 'as soon as the situation is confirmed') is set out in the Annual Security Report and is paraphrased rather than quoted.
- Emergency notification vs. timely warning
- Boston College operates under the Clery Act's two-track structure — emergency notifications for immediate threats and timely warnings (issued as 'Crime Alerts') for ongoing-threat crimes — with the governing criteria published in its Annual Security and Fire Safety Report.
- Testing cadence
- Boston College conducts periodic tests of its emergency notification system as required under the Clery Act; the precise cadence is published in the Annual Security Report and is not quoted here because the source page could not be reproduced verbatim.
- Scope & limits
- The system reaches students, faculty, and staff via campus-wide email, text, and the BC Safe app, with website, social media, and the 1-888-BOS-COLL emergency information line as supplemental channels; activation is bounded by confirmation of an emergency and managed by the Office of Emergency Management.
ChannelsEmailSmsPush NotificationWebsiteTwitter XFacebookPhone Call
Analysis
Reading the policy
Boston College routes emergency communication through a single mass-notification platform built on Rave Mobile Safety. Per the Office of Emergency Management's Communication page, "The Boston College Emergency Notification System sends out campus-wide emails and text messages to Boston College students, faculty, and staff as well as to the BC Safe Mobile App," and "Postings to websites and social media pages are used as well." The university describes the BC Safe app as integrated with "BC's Rave Alert Emergency Notification System," so push notifications, SMS, and email all originate from the same vendor backbone. BC Safe replaced an earlier Crisis Manager application and bundles day-to-day campus resources alongside emergency functions.
The Office of Emergency Management is the responsible office for managing BC's emergency communications and preparedness; it maintains the @BC_OEM account on X and a dedicated emergency Facebook page as secondary alert channels, and can be reached at bc_emergency@bc.edu or 617-552-4316. During major emergencies, family members and others off campus are directed to the emergency information line at 1-888-BOS-COLL (1-888-267-2655) and the BC Emergency website at www.bc.edu/emergency, which are updated with messages, information, and instructions. The university's published materials describe the channels and responsible office clearly but do not, on the public Communication page, name the specific individual or rank authorized to trigger an alert; activation authority is documented in the Annual Security Report rather than on the public emergency-management pages.
On Clery framing, the Clery Act establishes the two notification types Boston College operates under: emergency notifications upon confirmation of a significant emergency or dangerous situation involving an immediate threat, and timely warnings (BC issues these as "Crime Alerts") for Clery-reportable crimes that represent an ongoing threat. BC's public emergency-management pages emphasize the delivery infrastructure (email, text, BC Safe app, web, social media, info line) over the legal-criteria language; the detailed criteria, decision authority, and testing procedures are published annually in BC's Clery Annual Security Report. Because the official .edu pages return HTTP 403 to this research environment, the verbatim excerpts below are drawn from the exact wording surfaced from those official pages; statements not reproducible word-for-word are paraphrased in this analysis rather than quoted.
Takeaways
Key findings
Boston College's Emergency Notification System delivers campus-wide email, SMS, and BC Safe app push alerts to students, faculty, and staff, with website, social media, and the 1-888-BOS-COLL info line as supplemental channels.
The BC Safe mobile app (which replaced the Crisis Manager app) is integrated with BC's Rave Alert system, so push, text, and email originate from the same Rave Mobile Safety backbone.
The Office of Emergency Management manages BC's emergency communications and preparedness and runs the @BC_OEM (X) and bcemergency (Facebook) accounts as secondary alert sources.
BC operates under the Clery two-track model — emergency notifications for immediate threats and 'Crime Alerts' (timely warnings) for ongoing-threat crimes — with detailed criteria, authority, and testing in the Annual Security Report.
Public emergency-management pages emphasize channels and the responsible office; the specific activation authority and testing cadence live in the Annual Security Report and are paraphrased here, not quoted, because the source pages 403-blocked direct fetch.
Policy, meet practice
When this system actually fired
1 documented time BC’s alert system was used, from the case archive.
Provenance
Sources
- Official
- Official
- Official
- Social
Tags
policyemergency-notificationtimely-warningcleryrave-alertbc-safemassachusettsprivate-r1
Added 2026-06-21Updated 2026-06-21Via ingestion