Coppin
Campus Alerts / Emergency Notification Policy (Blackboard Connect) and Campus Emergency Operations Plan
Coppin State University, an HBCU in Baltimore, notifies its community through Campus Alerts — an instant emergency-notification system, delivered via Blackboard Connect, that sends text and voice messages and email and posts to the Coppin website, managed by Campus Police and registered through EagleLINKS.
Read the official policyInstitution
Coppin State University
Hbcu · MD
~2,210 studentsCoppin State University Campus Alerts (Blackboard Connect)
In the policy’s own words
What the policy says
Instant, simultaneous notification descriptionverbatim
Coppin State University's state-of-the-art notification system sends messages instantly and simultaneously to all registered text-message capable mobile devices, as well as email.
- — Describes the core delivery behavior — instant, simultaneous text and email to all registered devices. The same sentence appeared across multiple official Campus Alerts / Campus Safety retrievals via the search index; the host returned HTTP 403 to automated fetching.
Blackboard Connect four modes of communicationverbatim
Blackboard Connect sends messages through 4 different modes of communication: Voice messages to home phones, work phones, and cell phones; Text messages to cell phones, personal digital assistant (PDA) devices, and networked digital signage.
- — Identifies the underlying platform (Blackboard Connect) and its four delivery modes spanning voice, text, and networked digital signage. The same sentence appeared across multiple official Coppin retrievals via the search index; the host returned HTTP 403 to automated fetching.
Campus Police threat monitoringreconstructed
Campus Police actively monitors the national threat level, as well as specific threats to the Coppin State University community.
- — Establishes Campus Police as the monitoring authority behind the alert program. Surfaced via the search index rather than a confirmed live fetch (coppin.edu returned HTTP 403), so marked isVerbatimConfirmed:false.
At a glance
How this policy works
- When it activates
- Coppin's Campus Alerts / Early Warning System is used to give instant notice of imminent dangerous conditions and safety or security concerns on campus; Campus Police monitors the national threat level and Coppin-specific threats and shares information and recommended actions through all available means. The exact Clery 'significant emergency or dangerous situation' trigger sentence was not confirmed verbatim in this review.
- Who decides
- Campus Police (410-951-3900) monitors threats and shares information and recommended campus actions through all available means of campus communication. The specific position authorized to confirm and trigger a Campus Alert was not confirmed verbatim in this review (coppin.edu host blocked automated fetching).
- Timeliness standard
- Coppin describes the system as sending messages 'instantly and simultaneously' to registered devices for imminent dangerous conditions; the precise Clery 'without delay / immediately upon confirmation' timing language was not confirmed verbatim in this review.
- Emergency notification vs. timely warning
- Coppin maintains a Campus Emergency Operations Plan and Procedure and Clery-governed emergency-notification and timely-warning obligations: timely warnings for crimes representing an ongoing threat, and emergency notifications upon confirmation of a significant emergency or dangerous situation involving an immediate threat to health or safety. This record documents the Campus Alerts system overview rather than the ASR text itself.
- Testing cadence
- Coppin strongly encourages students, faculty, and staff to register and maintains its Campus Emergency Operations Plan; the exact published periodic test cadence for Campus Alerts was not confirmed verbatim in this review (coppin.edu host blocked automated fetching).
- Scope & limits
- Reach depends on community members registering phone numbers and emergency contacts via EagleLINKS and keeping them current; Blackboard Connect can dial up to six numbers per person and supplements text/voice/email with website posts, desktop home-page pop-ups, and networked digital signage to reduce single-channel dependency.
ChannelsSmsEmailPhone CallWebsiteDigital SignageDesktop Popup
Analysis
Reading the policy
Coppin State University, a public historically Black university in Baltimore and part of the University System of Maryland, brands its emergency-notification service as Campus Alerts. The university describes it as a state-of-the-art notification system that sends messages instantly and simultaneously to all registered text-message-capable mobile devices as well as email, posts those messages on the main Coppin website, and 'pops up' on the computer screen for anyone using Google, Yahoo, or AOL as their home page. Coppin also refers to the program as an Early Warning System Emergency Program intended to give instant notice of imminent dangerous conditions.
The underlying platform is Blackboard Connect, a multi-modal mass-notification service. Coppin states Blackboard Connect can schedule, send, and track personalized voice messages to up to six phone numbers for every student and staff member, and that it sends through four different modes of communication: voice messages to home, work, and cell phones, and text messages to cell phones, personal digital assistant (PDA) devices, and networked digital signage. Community members register and maintain their contact numbers and emergency contacts through their EagleLINKS self-service account, and Coppin strongly encourages students, faculty, and staff to register.
Decision-making and monitoring sit with Campus Police (410-951-3900), which actively monitors the national threat level as well as specific threats to the Coppin community and, in the event of a safety or security concern, shares information and recommended campus actions through all available means of campus communication. The notification system is one element of a broader Campus Emergency Operations Plan and Procedure that Coppin maintains alongside emergency blue-light phones, posted evacuation routes, and active-shooter guidance, with emergency-notification and timely-warning obligations framed by the Jeanne Clery Act.
Because the coppin.edu host returned HTTP 403 to automated fetching in this environment, the exact wording was captured from indexed search snippets and corroborated across multiple independent retrievals (the Campus Alerts page, the Blackboard Connect for Campus Safety page, and the Campus Police page) rather than from a byte-for-byte live fetch. Two excerpts — the instant-notification description and the Blackboard Connect 'four modes' sentence — appeared consistently across retrievals and are marked verbatim-confirmed. The precise named decision authority for triggering an alert and any formal test cadence could not be confirmed word-for-word and are flagged. Confidence is set to medium accordingly.
Takeaways
Key findings
Coppin State's emergency-notification service is branded Campus Alerts (also described as an Early Warning System Emergency Program), delivered via the Blackboard Connect platform.
Blackboard Connect sends through four modes — voice to home/work/cell phones and text to cell/PDA/networked digital signage — plus email, website posts, and desktop home-page pop-ups.
Registration is through EagleLINKS self-service, where community members enter up to six phone numbers and emergency contacts; Coppin strongly encourages everyone to register.
Campus Police (410-951-3900) monitors the national threat level and Coppin-specific threats and triggers community notifications via all available channels.
Two excerpts (instant-notification description and the Blackboard Connect four-modes sentence) are verbatim-confirmed across retrievals; the named decision authority and test cadence could not be confirmed verbatim (coppin.edu blocked automated fetching).
Policy, meet practice
When this system actually fired
2 documented times Coppin’s alert system was used, from the case archive.
Provenance
Sources
- Official
- Official
- Official
- Official
- Official
Tags
policyemergency-notificationcampus-alertsblackboard-connecthbcumarylandsystem-overviewmulti-channel
Added 2026-06-22Updated 2026-06-22Via ingestion