Colgate
Colgate Alert / Emergency Notifications and Timely Warnings
Colgate University's emergency-notification system is branded Colgate Alert, a Rave-based platform that sends time-sensitive emergency messages via email, text, and voice using the contact information in each person's Colgate portal account; the Clery emergency-notification and timely-warning functions are documented in Colgate's Annual Security and Fire Safety Report.
Read the official policyInstitution
Colgate University
Private Liberal Arts · NY
Colgate Alert
In the policy’s own words
What the policy says
Colgate Alert definitionverbatim
Colgate Alert allows Colgate University to send time-sensitive emergency messages to students, faculty, and staff via email and any other contact information listed in your portal account.
- — Establishes the branded system name and that delivery keys off the portal account. Identical wording appeared across multiple independent WebSearch retrievals of the official Colgate pages.
Automatic enrollment from portal accountverbatim
Colgate Alert automatically utilizes the contact information listed in your portal account, so individual registration is not necessary.
- — Documents the auto-enrollment design that removes opt-in friction. Identical wording appeared across two separate WebSearch retrievals of the official page.
e2Campus replaced to close an opt-in coverage gapreconstructed
The old security system, "e2Campus," was replaced with the new Colgate Alert system because it was not able to automatically download contact information from the Colgate database, and required students to opt-in and register themselves individually, which resulted in a number of students being left out of the alert system.
- — Explains the institutional rationale for the auto-enrolled model. This sentence is a paraphrase surfaced via the search index rather than a confirmed verbatim quote, so it is marked isVerbatimConfirmed:false.
At a glance
How this policy works
- When it activates
- Colgate Alert is used to send time-sensitive emergency messages. Emergency notifications under Clery are reserved for a significant emergency or dangerous situation involving an immediate threat to the health or safety of students or employees; timely warnings address Clery-reportable crimes that present a serious or continuing threat to the community. The exact threshold wording from Colgate's ASR was not confirmed verbatim in this review.
- Who decides
- Colgate's Department of Campus Safety administers Colgate Alert and the Clery compliance program. The specific named position authorized to confirm an emergency and trigger a Colgate Alert was not confirmable verbatim (colgate.edu and the ASR PDF blocked automated fetching).
- Timeliness standard
- Colgate Alert is described as a system for 'time-sensitive emergency messages,' consistent with the Clery requirement to notify the community immediately upon confirmation of a significant emergency. The precise published timing language was not confirmed byte-for-byte in this review.
- Emergency notification vs. timely warning
- Colgate maintains the two distinct Clery functions — emergency notifications for immediate threats and timely warnings for Clery-reportable crimes posing a serious or continuing threat — and publishes an Annual Security and Fire Safety Report by October 1 each year covering the preceding three calendar years.
- Testing cadence
- Colgate documents its emergency-notification testing in the Annual Security and Fire Safety Report; the exact published periodic test cadence for Colgate Alert was not confirmed verbatim in this review (colgate.edu and the ASR PDF blocked automated fetching).
- Scope & limits
- Registration is not necessary because Colgate Alert automatically uses portal contact data, but reach for text and voice depends on community members keeping that information current; each person may store up to three email addresses, three mobile numbers, and three voice-only numbers. The auto-enrollment model was adopted specifically to eliminate the opt-in coverage gap of the prior e2Campus system.
ChannelsEmailSmsPhone CallWebsite
Analysis
Reading the policy
Colgate University is a private liberal-arts university in Hamilton, New York. Its emergency-notification system is branded Colgate Alert. Colgate describes it as the system that 'allows Colgate University to send time-sensitive emergency messages to students, faculty, and staff via email and any other contact information listed in your portal account.' The system runs on the Rave platform — Colgate community members are also told they can use the underlying Rave Alert system to receive emergency or weather-related cancellation information by text, email, and phone.
The defining design choice is automatic enrollment from the system of record. Colgate states that 'Colgate Alert automatically utilizes the contact information listed in your portal account, so individual registration is not necessary.' Community members can log in to the Colgate Portal, click the Colgate Alert link, and enter up to three email addresses, three mobile phone numbers, and three voice-only telephone numbers. This was a deliberate fix for a known coverage gap: the Colgate Maroon-News reported that the old 'e2Campus' system could not automatically download contact information from the Colgate database and required students to opt in and register individually, which left a number of students out of the alert system. Switching to a portal-synced, auto-enrolled model closed that gap so that opt-in friction no longer determines who receives a life-safety message.
On the Clery side, Colgate maintains the two federally required functions and documents them through its Clery compliance program. Like all Title IV institutions, Colgate publishes an Annual Security and Fire Safety Report by October 1 each year covering crime statistics, reporting policies, and its policies and procedures for timely warnings and emergency notifications for the preceding three calendar years. Emergency notifications are reserved for a significant emergency or dangerous situation involving an immediate threat to the health or safety of the community; timely warnings address Clery-reportable crimes that present a serious or continuing threat.
Because colgate.edu returned HTTP 403 to automated fetching in this environment, the excerpts below were captured from multiple independent WebSearch retrievals of the official pages. The Colgate Alert definition sentence and the automatic-enrollment sentence each appeared with identical wording across separate retrievals and are marked verbatim-confirmed; the e2Campus history is attributed to the student newspaper and is marked reconstructed.
Takeaways
Key findings
Colgate's branded emergency-notification system is Colgate Alert, a Rave-based platform delivering email, text, and voice messages.
Colgate Alert is auto-enrolled: it pulls contact data from each person's Colgate portal account, so individual registration is not required.
Each user may store up to three email addresses, three mobile numbers, and three voice-only numbers in the portal.
Colgate Alert replaced an older opt-in system, e2Campus, which had left some students out of the alert system — the auto-enrolled model was adopted to close that gap.
Colgate maintains distinct Clery emergency-notification and timely-warning functions and publishes an Annual Security and Fire Safety Report by October 1 each year.
Two excerpts were confirmed verbatim across independent retrievals; the e2Campus history is attributed to the student newspaper and marked reconstructed; colgate.edu's 403 blocking prevented confirmation of the ASR threshold/test-cadence language.
Policy, meet practice
When this system actually fired
1 documented time Colgate’s alert system was used, from the case archive.
Provenance
Sources
- Official
- Official
- Official
- Student Paper
Tags
policyemergency-notificationtimely-warningprivate-liberal-artsnew-yorkcolgate-alertraveauto-enrollment
Added 2026-06-22Updated 2026-06-22Via ingestion