LWTech
Safety and Security Policy
Lake Washington Institute of Technology, a public two-year technical college in Kirkland, Washington, publishes its emergency-notification procedures through a Board-adopted Safety and Security Policy and a companion Emergency Communications page describing its Omnilert and FlashAlert systems.
Read the official policyInstitution
Lake Washington Institute of Technology
Technical College · WA
Omnilert
In the policy’s own words
What the policy says
Presidential emergency authorityreconstructed
the President or designee will maintain the College's educational functions and services
- — Establishes the President or designee as the responsible authority for maintaining operations during an emergency; reconstructed from a search-summary paraphrase, so marked not verbatim-confirmed pending direct page access.
Discretionary emergency definitionreconstructed
other conditions as the President or designee deems as appropriate
- — Shows the policy leaves the definition of a qualifying emergency open-ended rather than an enumerated list; reconstructed from a search-summary paraphrase, so marked not verbatim-confirmed.
Two parallel alert systemsverbatim
LWTech uses two campus emergency alert systems to notify students, faculty, staff, the community, and the media when campus activities are affected due to unexpected circumstances.
- — Confirms LWTech's two-system model (Omnilert plus FlashAlert) rather than a single unified alert platform.
Omnilert channel capabilityverbatim
The Omnilert system is capable of sending emergency notifications instantly and simultaneously to all registered mobile phones, wireless PDAs, pagers, smartphones, satellite phones, and email addresses.
- — Enumerates Omnilert's registered-device channels, an unusually broad list including pagers and satellite phones.
FlashAlert's media-facing purposeverbatim
FlashAlert is an emergency alert system used by the media to announce school closures and schedule changes.
- — Defines FlashAlert's distinct, media-facing role alongside the primary Omnilert notification system.
At a glance
How this policy works
- When it activates
- Emergency conditions are those the President or designee deems as appropriate; documented examples include the need to lockdown a campus, communicated via Omnilert and the PA system, and unexpected circumstances affecting campus activities more broadly.
- Who decides
- The President or designee holds overall authority to maintain the college's educational functions and take necessary measures, including legal and prompt use of college employees and local law enforcement agencies, to prevent injury to people and property.
- Timeliness standard
- A specific minutes-based timeliness standard was not reproduced verbatim in the sources reviewed; Omnilert is described as capable of sending notifications instantly and simultaneously across registered channels.
- Emergency notification vs. timely warning
- The Safety and Security Policy and Emergency Communications pages describe LWTech's notification mechanics without reproducing a separate, distinctly labeled Clery timely-warning clause in the sources reviewed; the policy is framed around presidential emergency authority and the Omnilert/FlashAlert delivery mechanism.
- Testing cadence
- A specific testing cadence for Omnilert or FlashAlert was not reproduced verbatim in the sources reviewed.
- Scope & limits
- Omnilert reaches registered mobile phones, wireless PDAs, pagers, smartphones, satellite phones, and email addresses, supplemented by Facebook and X posts; FlashAlert is scoped specifically to media-facing closure and schedule-change announcements rather than general emergency alerting.
ChannelsSmsEmailPa SystemTwitter XFacebookWebsite
Analysis
Reading the policy
LWTech's Safety and Security Policy places overall emergency authority with the college president rather than with a single public-safety office: the policy provides for the President or designee to maintain the college's educational functions and services and to take necessary measures to prevent injury to people and property by stopping any campus disruption, with legal and prompt use of college employees and local law enforcement agencies where necessary. That framing, that the President or designee holds decision authority, and further emergency conditions are those the President or designee deems appropriate, gives LWTech's top administration broad discretion over what counts as an emergency rather than binding the college to a fixed, enumerated list of triggering events.
Operationally, LWTech runs two parallel alerting systems rather than one. Campus Public Safety and/or Facilities staff will notify the campus via Omnilert and the PA system of the need to lockdown, and more broadly LWTech uses two campus emergency alert systems to notify students, faculty, staff, the community, and the media when campus activities are affected due to unexpected circumstances. The primary system, Omnilert, is described as capable of sending emergency notifications instantly and simultaneously to all registered mobile phones, wireless PDAs, pagers, smartphones, satellite phones, and email addresses, with alert updates also posted on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter). The second system, FlashAlert, exists specifically for media-facing closure announcements: FlashAlert is an emergency alert system used by the media to announce school closures and schedule changes, delivered via email, text, and a dedicated FlashAlert Messenger app, and LWTech staff update FlashAlert at the same time Omnilert is updated, so the two systems fire together rather than sequentially.
LWTech's Campus Public Safety office reports directly to the Vice President of Administrative Services, and the college directs emergencies to be reported first to 911 (9-911 from an on-campus phone) and then to Campus Public Safety at 425-739-8224. The dual-system, president-authorized structure is typical of a smaller technical college that must reach both an on-campus population and an off-campus media/community audience without a large dedicated emergency-management staff.
Takeaways
Key findings
LWTech's Safety and Security Policy vests the President or designee with broad, undefined discretion to determine what constitutes an emergency and to direct the college's response.
LWTech operates two parallel alert systems: Omnilert for direct community notification (mobile phones, pagers, satellite phones, email, plus Facebook/X) and FlashAlert specifically for media-facing school-closure and schedule-change announcements.
LWTech staff update FlashAlert at the same time Omnilert is updated, so the two systems are intended to fire together rather than one after the other.
Campus Public Safety reports directly to the Vice President of Administrative Services rather than to a separate emergency-management division.
The Safety and Security Policy's core authority language could not be directly fetched in this environment (403 responses from lwtech.edu); the two presidential-authority excerpts are therefore marked not verbatim-confirmed, while the Emergency Communications excerpts, independently corroborated across multiple search queries, are marked verbatim-confirmed.
Provenance
Sources
- Official
- Official
- Official
Tags
policyemergency-notificationtechnical-collegewashingtonomnilertflashalertkirkland
Added 2026-07-03Updated 2026-07-03Via ingestion