TAC
Campus Safety Procedures - Safety Alert System
Thomas Aquinas College, a small Great Books liberal-arts college that grants only a single bachelor's degree, reserves its Safety Alert System mass-text messages for rare campus-wide danger requiring immediate action, and layers that with a distinctly analog backup: ringing the campus chapel bells for at least three minutes to signal an evacuation assembly at St. Joseph Commons.
Read the official policyInstitution
Thomas Aquinas College
Private Bachelors · CA
~400 studentsSafety Alert System
In the policy’s own words
What the policy says
Scope of the Safety Alert Systemverbatim
The College has a safety alert system which is intended for use only in the rare occurrence of a danger to the community as a whole or some other event that requires immediate action. In such an event this system will be used to send out a mass text message to help spread the safety alert as quickly as possible among the on-campus community.
- Explicitly limits the mass-text alert to rare, campus-wide, immediate-action situations rather than routine crime notice.
Automatic enrollment from registration dataverbatim
Students are automatically enrolled in the safety alert system using the cell phone number they provided during registration.
- Removes the opt-in failure point common to other institutions' registration-based systems.
Reaching students without cell phones on themverbatim
In emergency situations, students will receive an emergency alert on their cell phones. Additionally, designated staff members will communicate the alert to campus buildings where students are not permitted to have cell phones.
- Documents a deliberate redundant channel for the College's no-cell-phones-in-class policy, closing the coverage gap a text-only alert would leave.
Evacuation authority and the chapel-bell signalreconstructed
The Dean and the Assistant Dean will order an evacuation if advised to do so by a civil authority.
- Names the Dean and Assistant Dean as the evacuation-order authority, contingent on advice from a civil authority; if the Dean/Assistant Dean order an evacuation the campus chapel bells ring for at least three minutes to signal assembly at St. Joseph Commons.
At a glance
How this policy works
- When it activates
- The Safety Alert System is intended for use only in the rare occurrence of a danger to the community as a whole, or some other event that requires immediate action.
- Who decides
- The Dean and the Assistant Dean will order an evacuation if advised to do so by a civil authority, and may issue a shelter-in-place order in some campus emergencies; a separate, unnamed administrative process governs activation of the mass-text Safety Alert System itself.
- Timeliness standard
- A specific minutes-based timing standard for issuing an alert was not found in the public sources reviewed; the College instead documents redundant simultaneous channels (text, in-person staff notification, and bell signal) intended to reach the community quickly by multiple routes at once.
- Emergency notification vs. timely warning
- The College's California and New England campuses each publish their own Annual Security and Fire Safety Report under the Clery Act, reflecting the two-campus structure operating under a single accreditation.
- Testing cadence
- A stated testing cadence for the Safety Alert System was not found in the public sources reviewed.
- Scope & limits
- Students are automatically enrolled using the cell phone number provided at registration rather than opting in separately. Because students are not permitted to have cell phones in classrooms and other campus buildings, the College explicitly supplements the text alert with in-person notification by designated staff and, for evacuations ordered by the Dean and Assistant Dean, a chapel-bell signal.
ChannelsSmsSiren
Analysis
Reading the policy
Thomas Aquinas College's California campus, capped near 400 students, publishes its emergency communication procedures on a dedicated Campus Safety Procedures page rather than a standalone policy document, and the page is candid about the system's narrow scope: it is intended for use only in the rare occurrence of a danger to the community as a whole, or some other event requiring immediate action, and in that event a mass text message is sent to spread the alert as quickly as possible among the on-campus community.
Enrollment in the alert system is automatic rather than opt-in: students are automatically enrolled using the cell phone number they provided during registration, removing the usual failure point of students never signing up. But the College also documents a real gap in that design and closes it deliberately: because students are not permitted to have cell phones in classrooms and other campus buildings, a text-only system would miss anyone inside at the moment of an alert. The College's answer is a redundant, low-tech channel: designated staff members will communicate the alert directly to campus buildings where students are not permitted to have cell phones, ensuring the alert reaches people who are, by rule, off their phones.
The College's evacuation procedure layers a third, even lower-tech channel on top of text and staff notification. Authority sits with the Dean and Assistant Dean, who will order an evacuation if advised to do so by a civil authority and may also issue a shelter-in-place order in some campus emergencies; when the Dean and Assistant Dean do order an evacuation, the campus's chapel bells will ring for at least three minutes as the signal for the community to assemble at St. Joseph Commons. That combination, a text/call alert plus staff floor-walks plus an audible bell signal timed to a minimum duration, reads as a policy built for a campus where cell phones are deliberately restricted in academic spaces, not assumed to be in every pocket at all times, an unusually explicit design choice this archive has not otherwise documented at this granularity.
The California campus's Annual Security and Fire Safety Report situates this alert system within the College's broader Clery framework; the College also operates a New England campus in Northfield, Massachusetts with its own separate Clery report, reflecting the two-campus structure under one accreditation.
Takeaways
Key findings
TAC's Safety Alert System is deliberately narrow: reserved for rare, campus-wide danger requiring immediate action, not routine crime notice.
Enrollment is automatic from registration data, not opt-in, closing a common failure point at other institutions.
Because students are barred from having cell phones in classrooms and other campus buildings, the College explicitly layers in-person staff notification and a chapel-bell signal (rung at least three minutes) as redundant channels alongside the mass text.
The Dean and Assistant Dean hold evacuation- and shelter-in-place-order authority, typically acting on the advice of a civil authority.
Provenance
Sources
- Official
- Clery ASR
- Clery ASR
Tags
policyemergency-notificationclery-actprivate-bachelorscaliforniagreat-bookssmall-college
Added 2026-07-20Updated 2026-07-20Via ingestion