Murray State
RacerAlert Emergency Notification System, Clery/Minger Notification
Murray State University's RacerAlert emergency notification system is documented in a Clery/Minger notification page that defines three distinct message types, Alerts, Timely Warning Notices, and Police Department Announcements, each tied to a different trigger.
Read the official policyInstitution
Murray State University
Public Masters · KY
~7,900 studentsRacerAlert
In the policy’s own words
What the policy says
RacerAlert purposeverbatim
RacerAlert ENS is a system intended to notify the campus community about any situation or condition that could threaten the safety of individuals on campus.
- — The top-level purpose statement for the whole RacerAlert emergency notification system.
Alert definition and minimum channelsverbatim
Alerts are emergency alerts letting you know about incident or condition that requires immediate attention and are required by the Clery Act. At a minimum, this type of notification will be made using text messages and emails.
- — Defines the emergency-notification tier and sets text and email as the guaranteed minimum channels.
Timely Warning Notice definitionverbatim
Timely Warning Notices are messages about crimes that have already occurred but represent an ongoing threat.
- — Defines the second, Clery-mandated tier, distinct from the immediate-attention Alert category.
Police Department Announcement definitionverbatim
Police Department Announcements are messages sent by the Murray State Police to inform the Murray State community of general safety information that is not required by the Clery Act, but which the police believe will assist the community in being safer.
- — Defines a third, non-Clery discretionary tier that lets police share safety information without triggering formal Alert or Timely Warning Notice status.
Distribution basisreconstructed
RacerAlert emergency notifications are sent to students, faculty, and staff who have provided their cell phone contact information through their MyGate accounts.
- — Describes the opt-in MyGate registration basis for text delivery; reconstructed from a search-summary paraphrase rather than a directly confirmed on-page sentence, so marked not verbatim-confirmed.
At a glance
How this policy works
- When it activates
- Alerts are issued for an incident or condition that requires immediate attention and is required by the Clery Act. Timely Warning Notices are issued for crimes that have already occurred but represent an ongoing threat. Police Department Announcements cover general safety information not required by Clery but believed to help the community stay safer.
- Who decides
- The Murray State University Police Department determines and issues RacerAlert Alerts, Timely Warning Notices, and Police Department Announcements.
- Timeliness standard
- The Clery Act requires Murray State to alert the campus community to certain crimes in a manner that is timely and will aid in the prevention of similar crimes; a specific minutes-based numeric standard was not reproduced verbatim in the sources reviewed.
- Emergency notification vs. timely warning
- Murray State separates its notifications into three tiers: Clery-required Alerts (immediate-attention incidents), Clery-required Timely Warning Notices (ongoing-threat crime patterns), and non-Clery Police Department Announcements (general safety information at police discretion).
- Testing cadence
- A specific testing cadence for RacerAlert was not reproduced verbatim in the sources reviewed.
- Scope & limits
- RacerAlert emergency notifications are sent to students, faculty, and staff who have provided their cell phone contact information through their MyGate accounts, an opt-in registration model rather than automatic enrollment from a separate university record.
ChannelsSmsEmailSirenPhone CallTwitter XDigital Signage
Analysis
Reading the policy
Murray State frames RacerAlert broadly at the top level: RacerAlert ENS is a system intended to notify the campus community about any situation or condition that could threaten the safety of individuals on campus. Underneath that umbrella, the Murray State Police Department publishes three named message categories rather than a single undifferentiated alert type, which is a more granular structure than many peer institutions publish.
Alerts are the emergency-notification tier: Alerts are emergency alerts letting you know about incident or condition that requires immediate attention and are required by the Clery Act, with a stated minimum delivery of text messages and emails, and the possibility of sirens, phone display, social media, and campus signage layered on top depending on the incident. Timely Warning Notices are the separate, Clery-mandated crime-pattern tier: Timely Warning Notices are messages about crimes that have already occurred but represent an ongoing threat, worded around the Clery Act's own requirement that the university alert the campus community to certain crimes in a manner that is timely and will aid in the prevention of similar crimes. A third, non-Clery tier exists for lower-stakes information sharing, Police Department Announcements are messages sent by the Murray State Police to inform the Murray State community of general safety information that is not required by the Clery Act, but which the police believe will assist the community in being safer, a useful category because it lets MSU Police disseminate safety information without inflating the count of formal Alerts or Timely Warning Notices.
Distribution for RacerAlert emergency notifications depends on self-registered contact data, sent to students, faculty, and staff who have provided their cell phone contact information through their MyGate accounts, meaning coverage is opt-in rather than automatically populated from a separate registration system. Murray State publishes its RacerAlert emergency procedures and shelter-in-place guidance as companion pages to the notification-type definitions, and restates the same Clery framework in its Annual Security and Fire Safety Report.
Takeaways
Key findings
Murray State publishes three distinct RacerAlert message tiers: Alerts (Clery-required, immediate attention), Timely Warning Notices (Clery-required, ongoing crime threat), and Police Department Announcements (not Clery-required, general safety information).
Alerts carry a stated minimum of text message and email delivery, with sirens, phone display, social media, and campus signage available as additional channels.
Police Department Announcements exist specifically as a non-Clery outlet, letting MSU Police share safety information without inflating the formal Alert or Timely Warning Notice count.
RacerAlert distribution depends on cell phone contact information provided through MyGate, an opt-in registration model.
The three-tier structure is documented on a dedicated Clery/Minger compliance page rather than folded into a single general alert FAQ.
Policy, meet practice
When this system actually fired
6 documented times Murray State’s alert system was used, from the case archive.
Provenance
Sources
- Official
- Official
- Clery ASR
Tags
policyemergency-notificationtimely-warningclery-actraceralertpublic-masterskentucky
Added 2026-07-03Updated 2026-07-03Via ingestion