WSU

BPPM 50.72: Timely Warnings and Emergency Notification Policy

WAStandalone policyWSU Alertmedium confidence

Washington State University codifies its Clery alerting rules as BPPM 50.72, a numbered section of its indexed Business Policies and Procedures Manual that binds every WSU campus, requires without-delay emergency notifications upon confirmation, mandates trained back-up designees for each responsible position, and sets an each-semester testing cycle.

Read the official policy

Institution

Washington State University

Public R1 · WA

~25,477 studentsWSU Alert

In the policy’s own words

What the policy says

Purposeverbatim

The purpose of this policy is to establish guidelines and procedures for providing timely warnings and emergency notifications to the campus community, in accordance with the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act (Clery Act).

Names both Clery tracks as the policy's whole subject in the opening sentence.

WSU Office of Policies, Records, and Forms, BPPM 50.72; captured via search-engine-indexed extract, host blocks automated fetch

Multi-campus scope tied to BPPM 50.71not yet verified against the source

The policy addresses this topic; its exact wording has not yet been verified against the source, so no text is quoted here. Open the official policy to read it.

WSU Office of Policies, Records, and Forms, BPPM 50.72; captured via search-engine-indexed extract, host blocks automated fetch

Back-up designee requirementverbatim

Each responsible position must identify and train back-up designees to provide timely warnings and emergency notification leadership if the primary responsible position is unavailable.

Continuity-of-alerting requirement: warning authority must survive the primary official being unreachable, a failure mode documented in delayed-alert cases across this archive.

WSU Office of Policies, Records, and Forms, BPPM 50.72; captured via search-engine-indexed extract, host blocks automated fetch

Semester testing cyclenot yet verified against the source

The policy addresses this topic; its exact wording has not yet been verified against the source, so no text is quoted here. Open the official policy to read it.

WSU Office of Policies, Records, and Forms, BPPM 50.72; captured via search-engine-indexed extract, host blocks automated fetch

At a glance

How this policy works

When it activates: Emergency notifications issue upon confirmation of a significant emergency or dangerous situation on a WSU campus involving an immediate threat to the health or safety of students or employees; timely warnings issue when a Clery Act crime on Clery geography is reported to campus security authorities or local police and represents a serious or continuing threat.
Who decides: The responsible campus department identified in the policy's responsibilities section issues warnings for its campus, coordinating with local law enforcement, WSU Emergency Management, campus environmental health and safety, student affairs, Compliance and Civil Rights, human resources, and the Threat Assessment Team; each responsible position must maintain trained back-up designees.
Timeliness standard: Emergency notifications must be issued without delay upon confirmation of a significant emergency or dangerous situation; timely warnings follow the Clery timeliness standard.
Emergency notification vs. timely warning: The policy implements both Clery tracks in one document and anchors their geographic reach to a separate Clery Geography Assessment Policy (BPPM 50.71) that defines which WSU locations are campuses.
Testing cadence: All WSU campuses test their emergency notification tools each semester, and responsible positions must be trained on the policy and the associated alert and distribution systems.
Scope & limits: Applies to all students, faculty, staff, and visitors at every location WSU has identified as a campus under BPPM 50.71, including Pullman, Spokane, Tri-Cities, Vancouver, and Everett; timely-warning distribution is targeted to the specific campus community that may benefit from the information.

ChannelsSmsPhone CallEmail

Analysis

Reading the policy

Where most institutions state their alerting rules inside an Annual Security Report, Washington State University maintains them as a numbered, centrally indexed manual section: BPPM 50.72, Timely Warnings and Emergency Notification Policy, published by the Office of Policies, Records, and Forms in the same Business Policies and Procedures Manual that governs purchasing and payroll. The placement matters: the policy is versioned, numbered, and citable the way an operating procedure is, and it interlocks with a sibling section, the Clery Geography Assessment Policy (BPPM 50.71), which defines exactly which WSU locations count as campuses that the alerting duty attaches to. WSU runs a statewide multi-campus system (Pullman, Spokane, Tri-Cities, Vancouver, Everett, and the Global Campus), and the policy applies at every location identified as a campus under 50.71, with each campus's responsible department designated in the policy's responsibilities section. The policy's emergency-notification half follows the federal standard: the responsible campus department must issue notifications without delay upon confirmation of a significant emergency or dangerous situation involving an immediate threat to health or safety. Its timely-warning half covers Clery crimes reported to campus security authorities or local police that represent a serious or continuing threat, with the preferred distribution being a combination of email to students, faculty, and staff plus social media, targeted to the campus community that would benefit. Two operational requirements stand out against the corpus of policies in this archive: every responsible position must identify and train back-up designees so that warning leadership survives the primary official being unavailable, and all campuses must test their notification tools each semester, a cadence written into the policy itself rather than left to practice. Coordination language pulls in local law enforcement, WSU Emergency Management, campus environmental health and safety, student affairs, Compliance and Civil Rights, human resources, and the Threat Assessment Team as information sources for warning decisions. Delivery runs through the WSU Alert system, which pushes voice and text to cell phones, landline calls, and email to WSU and personal addresses registered through the myWSU portal. Because wsu.edu hosts are not reachable from this research environment (automated fetches return errors), the passages quoted below come from search-engine-indexed extracts of the policy page rather than a firsthand line-by-line read, so every excerpt is marked isVerbatimConfirmed: false and confidence is held at medium.

Takeaways

Key findings

WSU publishes its alerting rules as a numbered section of its indexed Business Policies and Procedures Manual, making the policy citable and versioned like an operating procedure.

The policy binds every WSU campus and outsources the definition of campus to a sibling Clery Geography Assessment Policy, BPPM 50.71.

Every responsible position must identify and train back-up designees so warning leadership survives the primary official being unavailable.

Notification tools must be tested each semester on every campus, a cadence fixed in policy rather than practice.

Warning decisions draw on a named coordination network: local law enforcement, WSU Emergency Management, environmental health and safety, student affairs, Compliance and Civil Rights, human resources, and the Threat Assessment Team.

Policy, meet practice

When this system actually fired

5 documented times WSU’s alert system was used, from the case archive.

Provenance

Sources

Official
BPPM 50.72 Timely Warnings and Emergency Notification Policy, WSU Office of Policies, Records, and Forms
policies.wsu.edu
archived copy
Official
WSU Alert, Washington State University
alert.wsu.edu
archived copy
Clery ASR
Annual Security and Fire Report 2025-2026, WSU Police
police.wsu.edu
archived copy
Official
Communication during an Emergency, WSU Office of Emergency Management
oem.wsu.edu
archived copy
Statement
The WSU Alert System and communications during an emergency, WSU Insider
news.wsu.edu
archived copy