Pepperdine
Emergency Communication — Everbridge Mass Notification & LiveSafe (Emergency Operations Committee)
Pepperdine University communicates emergencies through Everbridge Mass Notification — used only at the discretion of the University's Emergency Operations Committee (EOC) during major campus incidents, life-safety emergencies, and testing — supplemented by the LiveSafe app and a real-time Emergency Information website.
Read the official policyInstitution
Pepperdine University
Private R2 · CA
~10,000 studentsEverbridge Mass Notification
In the policy’s own words
What the policy says
Everbridge definition and channelsverbatim
Everbridge Mass Notification is the University's emergency communication system that allows the University to send a message to University faculty, staff and student cell, office, and home phones, as well as send text message, and email.
- — Names the commercial Everbridge platform as Pepperdine's emergency communication system and lists its delivery channels (cell/office/home phone, text, email).
EOC-discretion activation barverbatim
The system is only used at the discretion of the University's EOC during major campus incidents, life safety emergencies, and for testing.
- — Sets a deliberately high activation threshold and vests the decision in the Emergency Operations Committee; the channel is reserved for major incidents, life-safety emergencies, and tests.
LiveSafe app capabilitiesverbatim
The LiveSafe app is designed to improve communication between University community members and Public Safety and enables individuals to discreetly call 9-1-1 as well as connect to Public Safety at the touch of a button.
- — Establishes LiveSafe as the two-way companion channel for tips, discreet 9-1-1 contact, and direct Public Safety connection alongside one-way Everbridge alerts.
At a glance
How this policy works
- When it activates
- Everbridge Mass Notification is used only at the discretion of the University's Emergency Operations Committee (EOC) during major campus incidents, life-safety emergencies, and for testing. Depending on the situation, community members receive information via Everbridge, the LiveSafe app, the Emergency Information website, or direct University communication.
- Who decides
- The interdisciplinary Emergency Operations Committee (EOC) is the University's centralized decision-making body during emergencies; Everbridge is activated only at the EOC's discretion, and the EOC posts decisions to the Emergency Information website in real time.
- Timeliness standard
- Pepperdine states it is vitally important that emergency situations involving the University community are reported in the most accurate and timeliest manner to both emergency responders and affected community members; specific numeric deadlines reside in the Annual Security & Fire Safety Report.
- Emergency notification vs. timely warning
- Pepperdine publishes an Annual Campus Security and Fire Safety Report on or before October 1 each year per the Jeanne Clery Act; public pages emphasize the Everbridge/EOC operational model, with the detailed emergency-notification and timely-warning criteria carried in the ASR.
- Testing cadence
- Everbridge is used for testing as one of its three authorized purposes (major campus incidents, life-safety emergencies, and testing); the precise announced-test cadence is documented in the Annual Security & Fire Safety Report.
- Scope & limits
- Everbridge reach depends on contact information each individual maintains in the WaveNet portal, so out-of-date records will not be reached. The system is deliberately restricted to EOC-authorized use for major incidents, life-safety emergencies, and testing — it is not used for routine communications.
ChannelsSmsEmailPhone CallPush NotificationWebsite
Analysis
Reading the policy
Pepperdine, a Christian university on the Malibu coast (a campus repeatedly threatened by wildfire), centers its emergency communication on the commercial Everbridge mass-notification platform rather than a home-branded 'Pepperdine Alert' name. The university states that 'Everbridge Mass Notification is the University's emergency communication system that allows the University to send a message to University faculty, staff and student cell, office, and home phones, as well as send text message, and email.' Critically, the platform is gated: 'The system is only used at the discretion of the University's EOC during major campus incidents, life safety emergencies, and for testing' — a deliberately high activation bar that limits the channel to genuine emergencies and scheduled tests.
Activation authority is institutionalized in an Emergency Operations Committee (EOC), an interdisciplinary body Pepperdine describes as the University's centralized decision-making body during emergencies. The EOC both decides when Everbridge is used and posts information and decisions affecting the community to the Emergency Information website in real time. The Everbridge roster is driven by the contact information each individual maintains in the WaveNet portal, so reach depends on community members keeping that record current.
Pepperdine layers additional channels around Everbridge. The LiveSafe app improves two-way communication with the Department of Public Safety — letting users discreetly call 9-1-1, submit emergency and non-emergency tips, use a person-to-person SafeWalk virtual escort, and view the University's emergency procedures. Depending on the nature of the situation, community members may receive information through Everbridge, the LiveSafe app, the Emergency Information website, or direct University communication from supervisors, co-workers, or Emergency Response Team members.
On Clery framing, Pepperdine publishes an Annual Campus Security and Fire Safety Report on or before October 1 each year in compliance with the Jeanne Clery Act, and stresses that 'it is vitally important that emergency situations involving the University community are reported in the most accurate and timeliest manner.' The public-facing pages emphasize the Everbridge/EOC operational model more than a separately enumerated emergency-notification-versus-timely-warning rubric; the precise Clery decision criteria and announced-test cadence live in the ASR. Because the official pepperdine.edu and emergency.pepperdine.edu pages return HTTP 403 to automated fetching in this environment, the verbatim excerpts below were captured from the official Emergency Communication, EOC, and Overview pages as reproduced in search results and corroborated across multiple independent queries; remaining detail is paraphrased.
Takeaways
Key findings
Pepperdine uses the commercial Everbridge Mass Notification platform (not a home-branded alert name) as its emergency communication system across cell/office/home phone, text, and email.
Everbridge is activated only at the discretion of the interdisciplinary Emergency Operations Committee (EOC) and only for major campus incidents, life-safety emergencies, and testing — a high, deliberate activation bar.
The LiveSafe app provides a two-way channel (discreet 9-1-1, tips, SafeWalk escort, emergency procedures) complementing the one-way Everbridge alerts and the real-time Emergency Information website.
Everbridge reach depends on each individual's WaveNet contact record, so stale contact info will not be reached.
Pepperdine publishes its Annual Campus Security and Fire Safety Report on or before October 1 each year under the Clery Act; the detailed emergency-notification/timely-warning criteria live in the ASR rather than the public Everbridge pages.
Policy, meet practice
When this system actually fired
6 documented times Pepperdine’s alert system was used, from the case archive.
Provenance
Sources
- Official
- OfficialEmergency Operations Committee (EOC) — Pepperdine Emergency Informationemergency.pepperdine.eduarchived copy
- Official
- Clery ASR
Tags
policyemergency-notificationtimely-warningclery-acteverbridgelivesafeemergency-operations-committeeprivate-r2california
Added 2026-06-21Updated 2026-06-21Via ingestion