Reed
Emergency Response Plan — Reed Campus Alerts, Emergency Notifications, and Timely Warning Notices
Reed College's emergency-notification system, Reed Campus Alerts, is powered by Singlewire InformaCast and delivers messages to cell, office, and home phones and email, backed by an emergency banner on the Reed homepage and speakerphone voice in administrative areas; Reed separately issues Timely Warning Notices for Clery Act crimes that represent a potentially serious and continuing threat to the community.
Read the official policyInstitution
Reed College
Private Liberal Arts · OR
~1,600 studentsReed Campus Alerts (Singlewire InformaCast)
In the policy’s own words
What the policy says
Timely Warning Notice definitionverbatim
Timely Warning Notices alert the Reed community to Clery Act crimes that have already occurred, but represent a potentially serious and continuing threat to the community.
- — Defines the Timely Warning function around already-occurred Clery crimes that pose a 'potentially serious and continuing threat.' Identical wording appeared across multiple official Reed Community Safety retrievals.
Reed Campus Alerts channel descriptionverbatim
Reed Campus Alerts, powered by Singlewire Informacast, will deliver messages to your cell phone, office phone, home phone, and/or email.
- — Names the platform (Singlewire InformaCast) and the delivery channels. Identical wording appeared across multiple official Reed retrievals (the Reed Campus Alerts page and the Emergency Response Plan).
Timely Warning issuing authorityreconstructed
Those with the authority to issue a Timely Warning Notice are the chair of the Emergency Response Team, an acting Incident Commander, the Vice President of Student Life, and the director of Environmental Health and Safety.
- — Lists the named positions authorized to issue a Timely Warning Notice — an unusually explicit decision chain for a small college. Surfaced via the search index; reed.edu returned HTTP 403 to automated fetching, so marked isVerbatimConfirmed:false out of caution.
At a glance
How this policy works
- When it activates
- Emergency Notifications are issued for a significant emergency or dangerous situation involving an immediate and ongoing threat to the health or safety of students or employees on campus. Timely Warning Notices are issued for Clery Act crimes that have already occurred but represent a potentially serious and continuing threat to the community.
- Who decides
- Per Reed's Emergency Response Plan, the Director of Community Safety or designee contacts the Executive Team (President and Vice Presidents) to declare a state of emergency. Those authorized to issue a Timely Warning Notice are the chair of the Emergency Response Team, an acting Incident Commander, the Vice President of Student Life, and the director of Environmental Health and Safety; dissemination is handled by the Director of Community Safety or designee, the director of strategic communications & marketing, or a member of the executive team.
- Timeliness standard
- Reed's telephone-broadcast layer is intended for emergencies where any delay in notification is likely to increase the risk of death or serious physical injury to members of the community, and timely warnings are issued as pertinent information becomes available — consistent with the Clery standard.
- Emergency notification vs. timely warning
- Reed separates the two Clery functions: Reed Campus Alerts emergency notifications for immediate/ongoing threats, and Timely Warning Notices for Clery Act crimes that have already occurred but represent a potentially serious and continuing threat. Reed publishes Clery materials through Community Safety.
- Testing cadence
- Reed runs drills with InformaCast and Zoom Phone and prebuilds text/audio messages for several scenarios; the exact published periodic test cadence (e.g., per-semester) was not confirmed verbatim in this review.
- Scope & limits
- All students, staff, and faculty are automatically enrolled for email alerts through college email; text and additional phone numbers (mobile and land-line, multiple devices) are opt-in. College email is therefore the guaranteed-reach floor, with SMS/voice as opt-in enhancements; the homepage banner and emergency.reed.edu provide channel redundancy.
ChannelsSmsEmailPhone CallWebsitePa System
Analysis
Reading the policy
Reed College is a private liberal-arts college in Portland, Oregon. Its emergency-notification system is branded Reed Campus Alerts and runs on Singlewire InformaCast. Reed states that 'Reed Campus Alerts, powered by Singlewire Informacast, will deliver messages to your cell phone, office phone, home phone, and/or email,' and supplements that with a homepage emergency banner and speakerphone voice communication in many administrative areas of campus — plus emergency.reed.edu as a fallback if the Reed network is unreachable. The vendor relationship is well documented: a Singlewire case study describes Reed pairing InformaCast with Zoom Phone to prebuild text and audio messages and run drills for several safety scenarios.
Enrollment is split by channel: all students, staff, and faculty are automatically enrolled for email alerts through their college email, while text and additional phone numbers (mobile and land-line) are opt-in and can be registered on multiple devices. This makes college email the guaranteed-reach floor and treats SMS/voice as opt-in enhancements — a notable contrast with colleges that auto-enroll personal cell numbers.
Reed's Emergency Response Plan names an unusually explicit decision chain. In an emergency or when one is likely, the Director of Community Safety or designee contacts the Executive Team (the President and Vice Presidents), which convenes to decide whether to declare an actual or likely state of emergency. For Clery warnings specifically, Reed lists those authorized to issue a Timely Warning Notice as 'the chair of the Emergency Response Team, an acting Incident Commander, the Vice President of Student Life, and the director of Environmental Health and Safety,' with dissemination handled by the Director of Community Safety or designee, the director of strategic communications & marketing, or a member of the executive team.
Reed keeps the two Clery functions distinct and defines them plainly. It states that 'Timely Warning Notices alert the Reed community to Clery Act crimes that have already occurred, but represent a potentially serious and continuing threat to the community,' while Emergency Notifications address a significant emergency or dangerous situation involving an immediate and ongoing threat to health or safety. The two verbatim-confirmed excerpts below (the Timely Warning Notice definition and the Reed Campus Alerts channel description) appeared with identical wording across multiple official Reed Community Safety retrievals. The published periodic test cadence was not surfaced byte-for-byte here (reed.edu 403-blocks automated fetching), so that field is reconstructed and flagged.
Takeaways
Key findings
Reed's emergency-notification system is 'Reed Campus Alerts,' powered by Singlewire InformaCast; the vendor relationship is corroborated by both Reed's pages and a Singlewire case study.
Email is auto-enrolled for all students, staff, and faculty; text and additional phone numbers are opt-in, making college email the guaranteed-reach floor.
Channel redundancy includes a homepage emergency banner, speakerphone voice in administrative areas, and emergency.reed.edu as a fallback if the Reed network is unreachable.
Reed's Emergency Response Plan names an explicit decision chain: the Director of Community Safety alerts the Executive Team, and four named positions are authorized to issue a Timely Warning Notice.
Two excerpts (the Timely Warning definition and the Reed Campus Alerts channel description) were confirmed verbatim across multiple official-page retrievals; the published test cadence could not be confirmed (reed.edu blocked automated fetching).
Policy, meet practice
When this system actually fired
2 documented times Reed’s alert system was used, from the case archive.
Provenance
Sources
- Official
- Official
- Official
- Source
Tags
policyemergency-notificationtimely-warningprivate-liberal-artsoregoninformacastsinglewirereed-campus-alerts
Added 2026-06-22Updated 2026-06-22Via ingestion