UH Mānoa
Emergency Notification (UH Alert) and Timely Warning Procedures
The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa — the flagship of the 10-campus UH System — delivers campus emergency notifications through UH Alert, powered by the UH Rave Alert system, which the system contracts from Rave Mobile Safety and which auto-enrolls every community member for email alerts (with opt-in SMS), while timely warnings for Clery-reportable crimes are issued separately by the Department of Public Safety.
Read the official policyInstitution
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Public R1 · HI
~19,000 studentsUH Alert (UH Rave Alert)
In the policy’s own words
What the policy says
UH Rave Alert auto-enrollment (email) vs opt-in SMSverbatim
All members of the UH community are automatically enrolled to receive emergency alerts from UH Rave Alert to their @hawaii.edu email address. Members of the UH community may also opt to receive emergency alerts from UH Rave Alerts to their mobile device via text messages (SMS).
- — Reproduced identically across multiple independent search returns of the official hawaii.edu/alert page. Establishes the hybrid model: automatic email enrollment for everyone, opt-in SMS by adding a mobile number to the UH Rave Alerts account.
Vendor contracted for the systemreconstructed
UH has contracted Rave Mobile Safety to provide the UH Rave Alert emergency notification system
- — Names the platform vendor (Rave Mobile Safety) and the system-level, multi-campus nature of the contract. Captured from search reproductions rather than a directly fetched page, so flagged unconfirmed.
Timely warning definition (UH Mānoa)reconstructed
A timely warning is issued when a crime listed in the Annual Security Report has occurred within UH Mānoa's Jeanne Clery Act reportable geography.
- — Distinguishes the email-only Clery timely warning from the UH Alert emergency notification. Captured from search reproductions of the DPS page (403-blocked to direct fetch), so flagged unconfirmed.
At a glance
How this policy works
- When it activates
- UH Alert / UH Rave Alert is activated for a significant emergency or dangerous situation involving an immediate threat to the health or safety of the community — described by the system as a natural, health, or civil emergency. A timely warning, by contrast, is issued when a crime listed in the Annual Security Report has occurred within UH Mānoa's Jeanne Clery Act reportable geography and the situation poses a threat to students but is not an emergency requiring immediate action.
- Who decides
- Under the UH System executive-policy framework, the determination of what constitutes an emergency is made only by the president, vice presidents, chancellors, vice chancellors, and formally designated emergency coordinators. Operationally, the UH Mānoa Department of Public Safety, in coordination with senior administration, authorizes and issues UH Alert emergency notifications and Clery timely warnings. (Comparable UH campuses, e.g. UH Hilo, vest the issuing decision in the Vice Chancellor for Administrative Affairs and the Director of Campus Security, with the Director able to act unilaterally in an extreme emergency.)
- Timeliness standard
- As a Clery-covered institution, UH Mānoa issues emergency notifications immediately upon confirmation of a significant emergency or dangerous situation, and timely warnings as soon as pertinent information is available. A specific numeric minutes target was not stated in the sources reviewed.
- Emergency notification vs. timely warning
- Clear two-track distinction: timely warnings (Clery-reportable crimes within Clery geography that pose a threat but are not an immediate emergency) are sent by email to @hawaii.edu accounts; emergency notifications (immediate threat) are pushed via UH Alert / UH Rave Alert through email and opt-in SMS. Both are documented in the campus Annual Security & Fire Safety Report.
- Testing cadence
- The campus Annual Security & Fire Safety Report documents periodic tests of the emergency-notification system, consistent with the Clery requirement to test emergency response and evacuation procedures at least annually; the exact published test schedule was not retrievable in this review.
- Scope & limits
- Email coverage is universal for active @hawaii.edu account holders (auto-enrolled), but SMS is opt-in — community members who never add a mobile number to their UH Rave Alerts account receive only email, not the faster text channel. Alerts for campuses other than a user's home campus are also opt-in. Timely warnings are email-only.
ChannelsEmailSmsWebsiteTwitter X
Analysis
Reading the policy
The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa is the R1 flagship of the University of Hawaiʻi System and the largest campus in the islands. Its emergency-notification platform is operated at the system level: UH has contracted Rave Mobile Safety to provide the UH Rave Alert emergency notification system to notify the UH community in the event of a natural, health, or civil emergency. UH Mānoa surfaces this as 'UH Alert' through its Department of Public Safety (DPS). Rave is the same FedRAMP-authorized mass-notification platform used across hundreds of U.S. campuses; the UH System rolled the unified UH Rave Alert out across its campuses in early 2025 (UH Maui College, for example, launched UH Rave Alert in January 2025).
Enrollment is hybrid: email is automatic and SMS is opt-in. All members of the UH community are automatically enrolled to receive emergency alerts to their @hawaii.edu email address, and all students, faculty, and staff automatically receive email alerts for their home campus. SMS is optional — users must log into their UH Rave Alerts account and add a mobile number to receive text alerts, and must separately select any additional campuses whose alerts they want to receive. This design guarantees baseline coverage for the whole community (every active account holder has an @hawaii.edu mailbox) while leaving the faster SMS channel as a user opt-in — a tradeoff worth noting, since email is slower to reach a phone than a text during a fast-moving event. Technical support and account questions route to uhrave@hawaii.edu.
UH Mānoa draws the standard Clery line between the two notice types. A timely warning is issued when a crime listed in the Annual Security Report has occurred within UH Mānoa's Jeanne Clery Act reportable geography and the situation poses a threat to students but is not an emergency requiring immediate action; timely warnings are sent via email to UH students and employees through their @hawaii.edu accounts. UH Alert / UH Rave Alert is reserved for emergencies — a significant emergency or dangerous situation involving an immediate threat — and can push both email and (for opted-in users) SMS. UH Mānoa's Annual Security & Fire Safety Report documents these procedures; the campus has previously been recognized nationally for its Clery compliance program.
On decision authority, the UH System's executive policy framework provides that the determination of what constitutes an emergency is made by the president, vice presidents, chancellors, vice chancellors, and formally designated emergency coordinators; in practice the campus DPS, in coordination with senior administration, authorizes UH Mānoa alerts and timely warnings. The exact UH-Mānoa-specific authorization chain and the published system-test cadence appear in the campus ASR and DPS policy pages, which 403-block automated fetching in this environment; those specifics are paraphrased here from search-engine reproductions of the official pages and the UH System policy, and only the auto-enrollment language — which reproduced identically across multiple independent returns of the official hawaii.edu/alert page — is flagged as confirmed verbatim.
Takeaways
Key findings
UH Mānoa, the UH System flagship, issues 'UH Alert' emergency notifications through the system-wide UH Rave Alert platform contracted from Rave Mobile Safety, rolled out across UH campuses in early 2025.
Coverage is hybrid: every community member is auto-enrolled for emergency email to their @hawaii.edu address, while SMS is opt-in (add a mobile number in the UH Rave Alerts account); cross-campus alerts are also opt-in.
UH Alert is reserved for immediate-threat emergencies (natural, health, or civil); Clery timely warnings — for reportable crimes within Clery geography that pose a non-immediate threat — are sent by email only.
Emergency-determination authority sits with UH executives (president, VPs, chancellors, vice chancellors, designated emergency coordinators), with the campus Department of Public Safety issuing UH Mānoa alerts and warnings operationally.
Only the auto-enrollment/opt-in-SMS language is confirmed verbatim (reproduced identically across independent returns of hawaii.edu/alert); vendor, timely-warning, and authorization specifics are paraphrased because hawaii.edu/manoa.hawaii.edu 403-block automated fetching.
Policy, meet practice
When this system actually fired
12 documented times UH Mānoa’s alert system was used, from the case archive.
+ 4 more in the case archive.
Provenance
Sources
- Official
- Official
- Clery ASR
- News
- Official
Tags
policyemergency-notificationtimely-warningpublic-r1hawaiirave-alertrave-mobile-safetyflagship
Added 2026-06-21Updated 2026-06-21Via ingestion