UW
Emergency Notification Information — UW Alert
The University of Wyoming's UW Alert is a Rave-powered text and voice messaging notification system that keeps students, faculty, and staff informed during time-sensitive emergencies; in a major event the UW home page is replaced by an emergency page and the same messages appear on campus digital signage, and UW distinguishes UW Alert (Clery emergency notifications) from its separate "notifications of criminal intent" (Clery timely warnings).
Read the official policyInstitution
University of Wyoming
Public R1 · WY
~10,813 studentsUW Alert
In the policy’s own words
What the policy says
What UW Alert isverbatim
UW Alert is a text and voice messaging notification system designed to keep students, faculty and staff informed during emergencies.
- — Defines UW Alert as a combined text-and-voice messaging system for the full student/faculty/staff community.
Clery emergency-notification scopeverbatim
In accordance with the Clery Act, the UW Alert system is designed to notify students, staff, and faculty of specific time-sensitive emergencies requiring immediate attention or action.
- — Anchors UW Alert to the Clery emergency-notification mandate and the 'time-sensitive / immediate action' threshold.
Emergency home page takeoververbatim
In some circumstances, the UW home page will be replaced by an emergency page, which will be updated with new information as it is relayed, including the complete directory of text messages sent and links for more information.
- — Documents the web-channel escalation: the main site is replaced by a continuously-updated emergency page archiving every text sent.
Rave registration and auto-feedverbatim
Text message alerts will be sent to users who are registered at www.getrave.com/login/uwyo. If you provided your cell phone number during class registration, that information is fed to the UW Alert system automatically every day.
- — Confirms the Rave (getrave.com/login/uwyo) platform and the hybrid enrollment model: daily auto-feed of registration cell numbers plus self-managed portal registration.
At a glance
How this policy works
- When it activates
- UW Alert is designed to notify students, staff, and faculty of specific time-sensitive emergencies requiring immediate attention or action. UW determines whether a notification will be issued on a case-by-case basis in light of all the facts surrounding the situation, including the nature of the crime, the continuing danger to the campus community, and the possible risk of compromising law-enforcement efforts.
- Who decides
- UW determines on a case-by-case basis whether to issue a notification, weighing the nature of the crime, continuing danger to the campus community, and the risk of compromising law-enforcement efforts. The University of Wyoming Police Department supplies the underlying information for criminal incidents. A single named approving official was not reproduced verbatim in the public sources reviewed (and a conflated University of Washington reference in one snippet has been deliberately excluded).
- Timeliness standard
- UW Alert is built for time-sensitive emergencies requiring immediate attention or action; in documented system-wide tests, recipients received messages within minutes of sending. A specific minutes-based standard for live incidents was not reproduced verbatim.
- Emergency notification vs. timely warning
- UW explicitly splits its Clery obligations: UW Alert messages fall under the Clery Act emergency-notification requirement, while separate notifications of criminal intent fall under the Clery Act timely-warning requirement.
- Testing cadence
- UW states the system is regularly tested and publicizes system-wide tests; in one documented test more than 13,000 students, faculty, and staff received a text within minutes. A fixed calendar cadence (e.g., per-semester) was not reproduced verbatim in the public sources reviewed.
- Scope & limits
- UW Alert is reserved for time-sensitive emergencies requiring immediate attention or action; routine criminal-threat notice is handled separately as 'notifications of criminal intent' (timely warnings). Text reach depends on a registered/auto-fed cell number; the emergency home page and digital signage extend reach beyond enrolled phones during major events.
ChannelsSmsPhone CallEmailWebsiteDigital Signage
Analysis
Reading the policy
The University of Wyoming describes UW Alert as a text and voice messaging notification system designed to keep students, faculty and staff informed during emergencies. In accordance with the Clery Act, the system is designed to notify the campus community of specific time-sensitive emergencies requiring immediate attention or action. UW draws an explicit Clery distinction: UW Alert messages fall under the emergency-notification requirement of the Clery Act, while the university's separate notifications of criminal intent fall under the timely-warning requirement.
Delivery is multi-modal and multi-channel. Text and voice alerts reach registered cell phones and email; in some circumstances the UW home page will be replaced by an emergency page, which is updated with new information as it is relayed, including the complete directory of text messages sent and links for more information; and emergency information is displayed on campus digital signage and monitors so the same message delivered via text also appears on campus screens. UW frames the case-by-case decision standard around the nature of the crime, the continuing danger to the campus community, and the possible risk of compromising law-enforcement efforts.
The platform is Rave: text message alerts are sent to users who are registered at www.getrave.com/login/uwyo, and if a cell phone number was provided during class registration, that information is fed to the UW Alert system automatically every day — a hybrid of auto-enrollment from registration data plus self-managed registration in the Rave portal. UW publicizes periodic system-wide tests; in one documented test, more than 13,000 University of Wyoming students, faculty and staff members received a text message within minutes after it was sent.
Because uwyo.edu hosts return HTTP 403 to automated fetching in this environment, the verbatim excerpts below were captured from official UW Emergency Management page text (and the UW Alert FAQ) as reproduced in search results and corroborated across multiple independent queries. One search snippet conflated this Wyoming policy with University of Washington Police Department content; that material has been excluded, and named approval authority is left unstated rather than asserted from the conflated source.
Takeaways
Key findings
UW Alert is a Rave-powered text and voice messaging system (getrave.com/login/uwyo) for time-sensitive emergencies requiring immediate attention or action.
UW splits its Clery duties cleanly: UW Alert = emergency notifications; separate 'notifications of criminal intent' = timely warnings.
Cell numbers provided during class registration are auto-fed into UW Alert every day, supplemented by self-registration in the Rave portal.
During major events the UW home page is replaced by an emergency page archiving every text sent, and the same messages appear on campus digital signage.
UW issues notifications on a case-by-case basis, weighing the nature of the crime, continuing danger, and risk of compromising law-enforcement efforts; the system is regularly tested (one test reached 13,000+ within minutes).
Policy, meet practice
When this system actually fired
6 documented times UW’s alert system was used, from the case archive.
Provenance
Sources
- Official
- Official
- Official
- Official
- Student Paper
Tags
policyemergency-notificationtimely-warningclery-actuw-alertravepublic-r1wyoming
Added 2026-06-21Updated 2026-06-21Via ingestion