SUBR
Emergency Response Plan & Annual Security Report — Emergency Notification (Jags Safe)
Southern University and A&M College — the flagship of the Southern University System and the nation's largest public HBCU campus in Baton Rouge, Louisiana — delivers emergency notifications through campus email and the **Jags Safe** app, with the Southern University Police Department confirming the emergency before disseminating messages "to the University community without delay" per its Annual Security Report. Southern was the first HBCU to partner with 911 Cellular for the Jags Safe mobile safety platform.
Read the official policyInstitution
Southern University and A&M College
Hbcu · LA
~6,713 studentsJags Safe
In the policy’s own words
What the policy says
Confirmation chain of authorityverbatim
The SU Police Department will notify the senior administrative officer available beginning with the Chancellor, the Executive Vice Chancellor, the Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration and other such administrative personnel as is appropriate to confirm that there is a significant emergency.
- — Establishes the confirm-then-notify chain of decision authority running from the SU Police Department up through the Chancellor's office; reproduced from the Annual Security Report.
Without-delay dissemination and mitigation exceptionverbatim
Messages will be disseminated to the University community without delay and taking into account the safety of the community, determine the content of the notification and initiate the notification system, unless the notification will, in the professional judgment of responsible authorities, compromise efforts to assist victims or to contain, respond to, or otherwise mitigate the emergency.
- — Reproduces the Clery 668.46(g) 'without delay' trigger and the standard mitigation exception; quoted from the Annual Security Report.
Primary notification channelsreconstructed
More updates will be made via campus email and the Jags Safe app available on Apple and Android platforms.
- — Identifies campus email and the Jags Safe app as the active update channels; surfaced via a search snippet from a Southern University campus-alert notice (host 403-blocks direct fetch), so flagged as not byte-confirmed.
At a glance
How this policy works
- When it activates
- An emergency notification is initiated upon confirmation of a significant emergency or dangerous situation involving an immediate threat to the health or safety of the campus community; messages are disseminated to the University community without delay, unless doing so would, in the professional judgment of responsible authorities, compromise efforts to assist victims or to contain, respond to, or otherwise mitigate the emergency.
- Who decides
- The SU Police Department notifies the senior administrative officer available — beginning with the Chancellor, then the Executive Vice Chancellor, the Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration, and other appropriate administrative personnel — to confirm that there is a significant emergency before disseminating notification.
- Timeliness standard
- Messages are disseminated to the University community 'without delay,' taking into account the safety of the community, subject to the Clery mitigation exception.
- Emergency notification vs. timely warning
- Standard Clery two-track structure: emergency notifications for confirmed immediate/imminent threats (delivered via campus email and the Jags Safe app), and timely warnings for Clery-reportable crimes posing a serious or ongoing threat.
- Testing cadence
- The University tests emergency response and evacuation procedures on at least an annual basis per calendar year, documenting a description of the exercise, the date and time, and whether it was announced or unannounced.
- Scope & limits
- Emergency notifications can be limited to the segment of the community for whom the notification is relevant rather than the entire campus. Primary channels are campus email and the Jags Safe app (text and email to registered users); the Jags Safe app also provides reporting, escort-request, Friend Watch, and bus-tracking features.
ChannelsEmailSmsPush NotificationWebsite
Analysis
Reading the policy
Southern University and A&M College centers its emergency communications on **campus email and the Jags Safe app**. Per the University, "more updates will be made via campus email and the Jags Safe app available on Apple and Android platforms," and the Jags Safe app component delivers notifications by text and email to registered users while adding interactive safety tools such as Friend Watch (a timer-based check-in that texts an emergency contact a location link if not deactivated), Bus Tracker, and one-touch reporting and police-escort requests.
**Platform / vendor.** Southern partnered with **911 Cellular** for the Jags Safe app — WAFB reported Southern was the first HBCU to team up with the company, whose platform "lets students report crimes at the push of a button" and provides shuttle location, police-escort requests, and panic-button capability. The vendor's higher-education platform provides mass notification and critical-incident management used by the campus alongside the consumer-facing Jags Safe app.
**Decision authority and timing.** Southern's Annual Security Report sets out a confirm-then-notify chain: "The SU Police Department will notify the senior administrative officer available beginning with the Chancellor, the Executive Vice Chancellor, the Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration and other such administrative personnel as is appropriate to confirm that there is a significant emergency." Once confirmed, "Messages will be disseminated to the University community without delay and taking into account the safety of the community, determine the content of the notification and initiate the notification system, unless the notification will, in the professional judgment of responsible authorities, compromise efforts to assist victims or to contain, respond to, or otherwise mitigate the emergency." This adopts the Clery 668.46(g) immediate-threat trigger with the standard mitigation exception.
**Testing.** Consistent with Clery, the University tests its emergency response and evacuation procedures at least annually per calendar year and documents a description of the exercise, the date and time, and whether it was announced or unannounced. Southern maintains the standard Clery two-track structure — emergency notifications for immediate/imminent threats alongside timely warnings for Clery-reportable crimes that pose a serious or ongoing threat — as reflected in its Annual Security Report and Emergency Response Plan.
Takeaways
Key findings
Southern University and A&M College delivers emergency notifications via campus email and the Jags Safe mobile app.
Southern was the first HBCU to partner with 911 Cellular, the vendor behind the Jags Safe app's text/email notifications, reporting, escort requests, Friend Watch, and bus-tracking features.
The SU Police Department confirms a significant emergency by notifying the senior administrative officer available (Chancellor, then Executive Vice Chancellor, then Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration) before disseminating notification.
Messages are disseminated to the University community 'without delay,' subject to the standard Clery mitigation exception.
The University tests its emergency response and evacuation procedures at least annually per calendar year, documenting the exercise description, date/time, and whether it was announced or unannounced.
Policy, meet practice
When this system actually fired
10 documented times SUBR’s alert system was used, from the case archive.
+ 2 more in the case archive.
Provenance
Sources
- Official
- Clery ASR
- Official
- Official
- News
- Source
Tags
policyemergency-notificationtimely-warninghbculouisianajags-safe
Added 2026-06-21Updated 2026-06-21Via ingestion