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Emergency Communications

SMCCCD Home Emergency Communications Communications and Notifications

Communications and Notifications

Guiding Principles 

In all communications during a crisis, the San Mateo County Community College District (SMCCCD) will strive to be accessible, prompt, compassionate, honest, and informative. Sharing information with the local and extended campus community is, and shall remain, a district communication priority. Sharing information does not include sharing every detail, but rather controlling the flow of information that is released. This allows individuals to make appropriate decisions, and is part of providing post-incident care. The district shall strive to share accurate, timely information in a transparent manner. The ten communication practices of the SMCCCD are as follows:

  1. Process approaches and policy development;
  2. Pre-event planning;
  3. Partnership with the public, and campus community;
  4. Listen to the community’s concerns and understand the audience;
  5. Honesty, candor, and openness;
  6. Collaborate and coordinate with credible sources;
  7. Meet the needs of the media and remain accessible;
  8. Communicate with compassion, concern and empathy;
  9. Accept uncertainty and ambiguity; and
  10. Messages of self-efficacy

When an emergency occurs in this community, it is vital to communicate information in an efficient manner. This may require immediate access to communication channels and stakeholders. Communication may be internal to the organization (to students/employees), or external to the District (surrounding community). Communication may require public information or notifications to community members, employees, students, and stakeholders.

Authority 

The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics (Clery Act)

Emergency Notifications:

Under the Clery Act, every institution is required to immediately notify the campus community upon confirmation of a significant emergency occurring on the campus that involves an immediate threat to the health or safety campus occupants. An “immediate threat" as defined here includes an imminent or impending threat to the campus, such as an approaching wildfire, or a fire currently raging in a campus building.

Emergency notification must be immediate after confirmation of a legitimate emergency or threat. Confirmation does not require knowledge of all pertinent details. Emergency Notification Procedures shall comply with The Handbook for Campus Safety and Security Reporting (Chapter 6).

Timely Warnings:

The Clery Act requires institutions of higher education to alert the campus community to certain crimes that are reported to campus security authorities or local police agencies, and are considered to represent a threat to students and employees.  These alerts must be done in a manner that is timely and that will aid in the prevention of such crimes.

Emergency Announcement System (EAS)

The San Mateo County Community College District has installed an Emergency Announcement System (EAS) on each of the three campuses, which allows emergency messages and alerts to be sent campus- wide in an efficient and timely manner. Emergency alerts sent by the EAS are delivered over loud speakers mounted on building rooftops and building interiors. The command center for the device is located in Public Safety Office on each campus and will be activated under the direction of the College Presidents, Director of Public Safety, Emergency Manager, Campus Captains, or other designated personnel. The device will be utilized for emergencies related to severe weather conditions, a dangerous person on campus, an emergency situation, or other special incidents that may arise and pose a potential threat to college students, faculty, staff, and visitors. Listed below are the recorded messages that will be used in accordance with each message.

AlertMe (RAVE)

AlertMe offers multiple ways to send and receive messages, including Guardian, a mobile app that enables our sender to deliver the emergency notification from any location without complex navigation. Notifications are broadcasted via email, text/SMS, push notifications, desktop alerts, voice calls, digital signage, website portals, social media outlets, and through our EAS. The system is an opt-out platform, meaning all recipients are populated in the system by our administrators, and have to manually remove themselves from the system if they prefer not to receive emergency notifications. Groups created in the platform enable the administrator to determine the correct campus community to receive the notification.

  1. Sign up for or text the following short codes to Opt-in for  RAVE Notifications 
  2. Download RAVE Guardian 

          Rave Mobile Safety Receives Investment from TCV - FinSMEs     RAVE

Gwamail 2.0 

GWAMAIL 2.0 is a web based application used to send non-emergency and non-confidential communications to students attending one of the colleges in the District. However, the District reserves the right to utilize the application as a redundancy system if other systems fail in a crisis. GWAMAIL can also be used post-incident to update students on the recovery and education continuity timeline in a possible campus closure. Messages are delivered by SMS or college email. Email accounts are accessible over the web at http://www.smccd.edu.

Websites

The San Mateo County Community College District shall utilize the homepage of the individual College Websites, the homepage of the Department of Public Safety, and the District’s homepage to post emergency notifications, and updates. A scroll shall be placed at the top of the page with emergency messages and instructions. The Web Programmer Analyst (WPA) shall be responsible for posting. If the WPA is unable to post to the websites, the Communication Manager or District IT shall serve as a redundancy.