Union
Policy: Timely Warnings and Emergency Notifications
Union College Campus Safety publishes a standalone Policy: Timely Warnings and Emergency Notifications that names the Director or Sergeant of Operations as the launch authority during business hours and passes that same authority to the on-duty Duty Supervisor overnight, so a notification is never waiting on a single unreachable person.
Read the official policyInstitution
Union College
Private Liberal Arts · NY
~2,065 studentsRave Emergency Alert System
In the policy’s own words
What the policy says
Business-hours and after-hours launch authorityreconstructed
During business hours, the Director or Sergeant of Operations will launch the timely warning or emergency notification. During non-business hours, the Duty Supervisor is vested with the authority to launch the timely warning or emergency notification as the Director's designee.
- — Explicitly time-shifts launch authority from a business-hours role to an overnight Duty Supervisor, closing the gap a single-named-official policy would leave after hours.
Two-part timely warning testreconstructed
A timely warning is a notification to Union College faculty, staff, students, and known visitors that will be issued when both elements are present: a Clery crime has been reported to Campus Safety which occurred on Union College Clery geography, and the Director of Campus Safety or designee has determined that the crime poses a serious or continuing threat to the campus community.
- — States the timely warning trigger as an explicit two-part conjunctive test rather than a single vague standard.
Emergency notification examplesreconstructed
An emergency notification is a notification to the campus, or a segment of the campus, that will be issued without delay when both of the following elements exist: there is a significant emergency or dangerous situation, i.e., tornado warning, hazardous chemical spill, fire threatening campus buildings, active violence incident, natural gas leak or terrorist incident.
- — Grounds the abstract 'significant emergency or dangerous situation' standard in concrete named examples rather than leaving it undefined.
Distribution reach requirementreconstructed
Although the Clery Act does not mandate the method of distribution of the warning, it must be likely to reach the entire campus community.
- — Sets a functional standard, full campus reach, for distribution rather than naming a fixed channel, leaving the specific method to Campus Safety's judgment.
At a glance
How this policy works
- When it activates
- A timely warning requires both a reported Clery crime on Union's Clery geography and a Director of Campus Safety determination that it poses a serious or continuing threat. An emergency notification is issued without delay for a significant emergency or dangerous situation, with the policy naming tornado warnings, hazardous chemical spills, fires threatening campus buildings, active violence incidents, natural gas leaks, and terrorist incidents as examples.
- Who decides
- During business hours, the Director or Sergeant of Operations launches the timely warning or emergency notification. During non-business hours, the Duty Supervisor holds that same launch authority as the Director's designee, so authority does not lapse outside normal working hours.
- Timeliness standard
- Timely warnings must be sent as soon as pertinent information is available; emergency notifications are issued without delay. The Clery Act does not mandate a specific distribution method, but Union's policy requires that whatever method is used be likely to reach the entire campus community.
- Emergency notification vs. timely warning
- The policy gives both timely warning and emergency notification explicit two-part definitional tests (a qualifying event plus a threat/emergency determination), rather than treating either as a matter of discretion alone, and assigns each launch decision to a named operational role rather than a committee.
- Scope & limits
- Timely warning geography follows the Clery definition: on-campus property, public property within or immediately adjacent to campus, and non-campus buildings or property Union owns or controls. The requirement that distribution be 'likely to reach the entire campus community' leaves the specific channel mix to Campus Safety's judgment rather than fixing it in the policy text.
ChannelsSmsEmailPhone CallWebsite
Analysis
Reading the policy
Union College, a small private liberal arts college in Schenectady, New York, maintains a dedicated Policy: Timely Warnings and Emergency Notifications document, kept separate from its general Timely Warnings and Emergency Notifications Clery overview page and from its Annual Security and Fire Safety Report.
The policy defines its two Clery categories with explicit two-part tests. A timely warning is issued when both a Clery crime has been reported that occurred on Union's Clery geography (on-campus, adjacent public property, or non-campus buildings or property Union owns or controls) and the Director of Campus Safety or a designee has determined the crime poses a serious or continuing threat to the campus community. An emergency notification is issued without delay when there is a significant emergency or dangerous situation, with the policy listing concrete examples rather than only abstract language: a tornado warning, hazardous chemical spill, fire threatening campus buildings, active violence incident, natural gas leak, or terrorist incident.
Authority to launch a notification is explicitly time-shifted. During business hours, the Director or Sergeant of Operations will launch the timely warning or emergency notification. During non-business hours, the Duty Supervisor is vested with that same authority as the Director's designee, so the ability to send an alert does not depend on reaching a single named person after hours. Once launched, a timely warning must include all information that will promote safety and aid in the prevention of similar crimes, and must be sent as soon as pertinent information is available; the Clery Act does not mandate a specific distribution method, but Union's policy requires that the method used be likely to reach the entire campus community, which in practice runs through the college's Rave-based Emergency Alert System to Union email, mobile numbers, and personal landlines.
Because union.edu returns HTTP 403 to automated fetching in this environment, the passages above are reconstructed from search-engine-indexed extracts of the policy page rather than a firsthand line-by-line read, so every excerpt below is marked isVerbatimConfirmed: false out of caution even though the underlying search results present them as close quotations. Confidence is set to medium on that basis.
Takeaways
Key findings
Union College's policy explicitly time-shifts notification launch authority from the Director or Sergeant of Operations during business hours to the on-duty Duty Supervisor overnight, rather than naming one person around the clock.
Both timely warning and emergency notification are defined as two-part conjunctive tests in the policy text, not left as a single discretionary standard.
The emergency notification definition lists concrete trigger examples (tornado warning, hazardous chemical spill, fire, active violence, gas leak, terrorist incident) rather than only abstract language.
Distribution is governed by a functional 'must be likely to reach the entire campus community' standard rather than a fixed list of required channels, run in practice through Union's Rave-based Emergency Alert System.
Provenance
Sources
- Official
- Official
Tags
policysoptimely-warningemergency-notificationclery-actraveprivate-liberal-artsnew-york
Added 2026-07-03Updated 2026-07-03Via ingestion