U of I
APM 95.24 — Vandal Alert Notification System
The University of Idaho operates Vandal Alert, an institution-wide, multi-modal emergency-notification system, under Administrative Procedures Manual policy 95.24, which authorizes the Executive Director of Public Safety and Security to broadcast emergency notifications upon a confirmed report of an immediate threat and to issue Clery timely warnings for crimes posing a serious or continuing threat to the Moscow, Idaho (Pacific Time) campus community.
Read the official policyInstitution
University of Idaho
Public R2 · ID
Vandal Alert
In the policy’s own words
What the policy says
Timely-warning crime list and serious-or-continuing-threat triggerverbatim
Timely Warnings will be broadcast when a report of murder, sex offense, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft, manslaughter, arson, or other Clery Act Crime is received by campus security authorities and, in the judgment of the institution, the crime at issue poses a serious or continuing threat to students and employees.
- — Enumerates the Clery crimes that trigger a timely warning, gated by the institution's serious-or-continuing-threat judgment. Identical wording appeared across two official-attributed APM 95.24 retrievals (uidaho.edu/policies/apm/95/24 and the governance/policy mirror).
Emergency-notification confirmation triggerverbatim
Emergency Notifications will be broadcast when the university receives a confirmed report from a cognizant authority (i.e. an emergency service authority), that a significant emergency or dangerous situation involving an immediate threat to the health or safety of students, faculty, staff or visitors is occurring.
- — Ties emergency notifications to a 'confirmed report from a cognizant authority,' a stricter-than-typical confirmation gate. Identical wording appeared across two official-attributed APM 95.24 retrievals.
Decision authority and 'without delay' standardverbatim
The Executive Director of Public Safety or designee will, without delay, and taking into account the safety of the community, determine the content of the notification and broadcast the notification, unless issuing a notification will, in the professional judgment of responsible authorities, compromise efforts to assist a victim or to contain, respond to or otherwise mitigate the emergency.
- — Names the decision authority and reproduces the federal Clery 'without delay / professional-judgment exception' language nearly verbatim. Reproduced identically across two official-attributed APM 95.24 retrievals (the public-safety overview and the policy text).
System definition (multi-modal)reconstructed
Vandal Alert is an institution-wide, multi-modal (e-mail, text message, etc.) emergency notification system.
- — Defines Vandal Alert as institution-wide and multi-modal. Surfaced via the search index from a single retrieval; uidaho.edu returned HTTP 403 to automated fetching, so marked isVerbatimConfirmed:false out of caution.
At a glance
How this policy works
- When it activates
- A Vandal Alert emergency notification is broadcast upon a confirmed report from a cognizant (emergency-service) authority that a significant emergency or dangerous situation involving an immediate threat to health or safety is occurring. A timely warning is broadcast when a Clery-enumerated crime (or other Clery Act crime) is reported to campus security authorities and, in the institution's judgment, poses a serious or continuing threat; non-Clery crimes posing such a threat may also trigger a timely warning.
- Who decides
- Per APM 95.24, the Executive Director of Public Safety and Security (or designee) determines the content of the emergency notification and broadcasts it 'without delay, and taking into account the safety of the community,' subject to the Clery professional-judgment exception. The Office of Public Safety, Security and Parking administers Vandal Alert.
- Timeliness standard
- APM 95.24 requires the Executive Director of Public Safety and Security or designee to act 'without delay, and taking into account the safety of the community,' unless notification would compromise efforts to assist a victim or to contain, respond to or otherwise mitigate the emergency — the federal Clery 'without delay / professional judgment' standard. An 'all clear' alert is broadcast when the threat no longer exists.
- Emergency notification vs. timely warning
- APM 95.24 expressly cites the Jeanne Clery Act (20 USC § 1092(f)) and separates emergency notifications (confirmed immediate threat to health or safety) from timely warnings (Clery-enumerated or other crimes posing a serious or continuing threat). The University of Idaho publishes an Annual Security and Fire Safety Report.
- Testing cadence
- APM 95.24 and the ASR provide for periodic testing of Vandal Alert and for documenting tests in the Annual Security and Fire Safety Report; the exact published periodic cadence was not confirmed verbatim in this review.
- Scope & limits
- Vandal Alert is institution-wide and multi-modal (email, text, voice). Reach depends on current contact information in the system, which students and employees are asked to maintain. Emergency notifications carry protective-action instructions and are followed by an 'all clear' when the threat ends.
ChannelsSmsEmailPhone CallWebsite
Analysis
Reading the policy
The University of Idaho (U of I) is the state's land-grant flagship in Moscow, Idaho — which observes Pacific Time, not Mountain — and its emergency-notification system is branded Vandal Alert. Unlike many institutions that bury alert procedures inside a Clery ASR, U of I maintains a dedicated, numbered standalone policy: APM 95.24 — Vandal Alert Notification System, part of APM Chapter 95: Public Safety and Security. The policy describes Vandal Alert as 'an institution-wide, multi-modal (e-mail, text message, etc.) emergency notification system,' delivering messages by text, email and voice call.
APM 95.24 explicitly invokes the Clery Act (20 USC § 1092(f)) for both functions. For timely warnings, the policy states they 'will be broadcast when a report of murder, sex offense, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft, manslaughter, arson, or other Clery Act Crime is received by campus security authorities and, in the judgment of the institution, the crime at issue poses a serious or continuing threat to students and employees,' and notes that timely warnings may also be issued for non-Clery crimes that pose such a threat. For emergency notifications, the policy provides that they 'will be broadcast when the university receives a confirmed report from a cognizant authority (i.e. an emergency service authority), that a significant emergency or dangerous situation involving an immediate threat to the health or safety of students, faculty, staff or visitors is occurring,' that notifications will include protective-action instructions, and that an 'all clear' alert will be broadcast when the threat no longer exists.
APM 95.24 names the decision authority directly: the Executive Director of Public Safety and Security (or designee) determines the content and broadcasts the notification 'without delay, and taking into account the safety of the community,' unless doing so would, in the professional judgment of responsible authorities, compromise efforts to assist a victim or to contain, respond to or otherwise mitigate the emergency — language that tracks the federal Clery exception verbatim. The U of I Office of Public Safety, Security and Parking and its Emergency Management function administer the system.
U of I's alert posture drew national scrutiny after the November 2022 off-campus murders of four students; the case is documented in the institution's 2025 Annual Security and Fire Safety Report and remains a live point of comparison for timely-warning judgment calls in the region. Because uidaho.edu and the ASR content-hub host return HTTP 403 to automated fetching here, the verbatim excerpts below were captured from indexed snippets; the timely-warning crime-list sentence, the emergency-notification 'confirmed report from a cognizant authority' sentence and the 'without delay' authority sentence each reproduced identically across two or more official-attributed retrievals and are marked verbatim-confirmed.
Takeaways
Key findings
The University of Idaho maintains a dedicated numbered standalone policy — APM 95.24 — governing the Vandal Alert emergency-notification system, rather than burying it in the ASR.
APM 95.24 names the decision authority (Executive Director of Public Safety and Security or designee) and adopts the federal Clery 'without delay / professional-judgment exception' standard nearly verbatim.
Emergency notifications require a 'confirmed report from a cognizant authority,' carry protective-action instructions, and are followed by an explicit 'all clear' alert.
Timely warnings enumerate the Clery crimes and may also cover non-Clery crimes posing a serious or continuing threat.
Moscow, Idaho observes Pacific Time (a common timezone trap); three excerpts were confirmed verbatim across two APM 95.24 retrievals, while the system-definition excerpt and the exact test cadence are flagged because uidaho.edu blocked automated fetching.
Policy, meet practice
When this system actually fired
4 documented times U of I’s alert system was used, from the case archive.
Provenance
Sources
- Official
- Official
- Official
- Official
- Clery ASRUniversity of Idaho — Annual Security and Fire Safety Report 2025content-hub.uidaho.eduarchived copy
Tags
policyemergency-notificationtimely-warningstandalone-policypublic-r2idahovandal-alertpacific-time
Added 2026-06-22Updated 2026-06-22Via ingestion