UCLA
UCLA Policy 130: Emergency Notifications (BruinAlert)
UCLA's BruinAlert emergency-notification system is governed by UCLA Policy 130, which directs the Office of Emergency Management to activate the system 'without delay' upon confirmation of a dangerous situation or significant emergency; Clery timely warnings are handled separately by the UCLA Police Department as Crime Alerts.
Read the official policyInstitution
University of California, Los Angeles
Public R1 · CA
~46,000 studentsBruinAlert
In the policy’s own words
What the policy says
Activation on confirmed emergencyverbatim
Upon confirmation of a significant emergency or dangerous situation occurring on the campus that involves an immediate threat to the health or safety of students or employees, the UCLA Office of Emergency Management will immediately initiate its mass warning policy and activate the campus emergency notification systems, also known as a BruinAlert.
- — Mirrors the Clery emergency-notification standard ('confirmation' of a 'significant emergency or dangerous situation' with an 'immediate threat'); names OEM, not UCPD, as the activating office.
Decision authority acts without delayverbatim
In the event of a confirmed Dangerous Situation or Significant Emergency, the Director of the Office of Emergency Management (OEM Director) or designee, without delay and taking into account the safety of the community, will determine the appropriate segment of the Campus Community to receive Emergency Notification; produce the content of the notification; and initiate the notification system.
- — Vests the timeliness obligation ('without delay') and the content/segmentation decision in a single named role, the OEM Director or designee.
Policy 130 excludes Timely Warningsverbatim
This Policy does not address Timely Warnings, which are required by the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act ("Clery Act"), as they do not constitute Emergency Notifications.
- — Makes the emergency-notification vs. timely-warning split explicit at the policy level; Timely Warnings are handled by UCLA PD in a separate document.
Timely Warning / Crime Alert criterionverbatim
A Timely Warning, also known as a Crime Alert, will be issued for all Clery Act crimes that occur on UCLA's Clery Act geography that are reported to campus security authorities or local police agencies and are considered by the institution to represent a serious or continuing threat to students and employees.
- — Uses the Clery 'serious or continuing threat' standard and ties scope to UCLA's defined Clery Act geography.
At a glance
How this policy works
- When it activates
- A BruinAlert Emergency Notification is issued upon confirmation of a Dangerous Situation or Significant Emergency involving an immediate threat to the health or safety of students or employees, or that disrupts normal operations of the UCLA campus or UCLA Health facilities. A separate Timely Warning (Crime Alert) is issued for Clery Act crimes on UCLA's Clery geography considered to represent a serious or continuing threat.
- Who decides
- Emergency Notifications: the Director of the Office of Emergency Management (OEM Director) or designee. Timely Warnings/Crime Alerts: UCLA PD Investigations Division personnel in consultation with the on-duty UCLA PD Watch Commander.
- Timeliness standard
- The OEM Director or designee acts 'without delay and taking into account the safety of the community'; OEM 'will immediately initiate its mass warning policy' upon confirmation.
- Emergency notification vs. timely warning
- Policy 130 governs Clery emergency notifications (BruinAlert) only and explicitly states it does not address Timely Warnings; Clery timely warnings (Crime Alerts) are governed separately by UCLA PD, which can also issue a lower-tier Crime Advisory for incidents not meeting the Timely Warning threshold.
- Testing cadence
- Tested annually via the Great California ShakeOut earthquake drill (mid-October), when OEM sends a labeled *TEST* BruinAlert via text, email, and the Bruins Safe app.
- Scope & limits
- The OEM Director may elect not to issue an Emergency Notification if notification may, in the judgment of UCLA emergency response personnel, compromise efforts to assist a victim or to contain, respond to, or otherwise manage the situation. Notifications may be sent to a specific affected segment of the Campus Community rather than everyone. Timely Warnings are limited to Clery crimes on Clery geography; out-of-geography or non-Clery incidents go out as Crime Advisories.
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Analysis
Reading the policy
UCLA splits its Clery alerting into two governance tracks. Emergency Notifications live in UCLA Policy 130 (BruinAlert), administered by the Office of Emergency Management (OEM), while Timely Warnings (Crime Alerts) are administered by the UCLA Police Department under the Clery Act. Policy 130 is explicit that 'This Policy does not address Timely Warnings ... as they do not constitute Emergency Notifications,' so the two categories are deliberately kept in separate documents and owned by separate offices.
For Emergency Notifications, the trigger is a confirmed Dangerous Situation or Significant Emergency. Upon confirmation of a significant emergency or dangerous situation involving an immediate threat to the health or safety of students or employees, the OEM 'will immediately initiate its mass warning policy and activate the campus emergency notification systems.' The decision authority is the Director of the Office of Emergency Management (or designee), who, 'without delay and taking into account the safety of the community,' determines the affected segment of the Campus Community, produces the content, and initiates the notification system. Policy 130 builds in the standard Clery exception: the OEM Director may elect not to issue an Emergency Notification if, in the judgment of UCLA emergency response personnel, notification may compromise efforts to assist a victim or to contain, respond to, or otherwise manage the situation. Channels include email, SMS text message, phone call, the Bruins Safe Online website, and Nixle; all UCLA students, staff, and faculty are automatically enrolled.
Timely Warnings/Crime Alerts are issued for Clery Act crimes occurring on UCLA's Clery geography that are reported to campus security authorities or local police and considered to represent a serious or continuing threat to students and employees. The determination is made by UCLA PD Investigations Division personnel in consultation with the on-duty UCLA PD Watch Commander. UCLA PD may also issue a lesser Crime Advisory for incidents that do not meet the Timely Warning threshold but may still pose a serious or continuing threat — for example, crimes outside UCLA's Clery geography or non-Clery crimes on it.
Testing is built around the annual Great California ShakeOut earthquake drill: OEM sends a clearly labeled '*TEST*' BruinAlert via text, email, and the Bruins Safe app, which doubles as a verification that the notification system functions before a real emergency. Because the official .edu and adminpolicies.ucla.edu pages return HTTP 403 to automated fetching in this environment, the verbatim excerpts below were captured from the official UCLA Policy 130 and UCPD page text as reproduced in search results and corroborated across multiple independent queries; remaining detail is paraphrased.
Takeaways
Key findings
UCLA governs Clery alerting in two separate documents: UCLA Policy 130 covers BruinAlert emergency notifications (owned by the Office of Emergency Management), while Timely Warnings/Crime Alerts are owned by UCLA PD.
Policy 130 explicitly states it 'does not address Timely Warnings ... as they do not constitute Emergency Notifications,' a clean structural split between the two Clery obligations.
The decision authority for an Emergency Notification is the OEM Director or designee, who acts 'without delay and taking into account the safety of the community,' and may segment the recipient population.
The standard Clery exception is preserved: notification may be withheld if it would compromise efforts to assist a victim or to contain/respond to the situation.
UCLA tests BruinAlert annually via the Great California ShakeOut drill, sending a labeled *TEST* alert by text, email, and the Bruins Safe app; all students, staff, and faculty are automatically enrolled.
Policy, meet practice
When this system actually fired
12 documented times UCLA’s alert system was used, from the case archive.
+ 4 more in the case archive.
Provenance
Sources
- Official
- Official
- Official
- Official
- Official
Tags
policyemergency-notificationtimely-warningclery-actbruinalertpublic-r1californiauniversity-of-california
Added 2026-06-21Updated 2026-06-21Via ingestion