Campus Alert Archive
Eight Chapters,
One Archive
The archive is large and the cases repeat each other in instructive ways. These eight chapters group the archive's cases by incident genre so the patterns (the language of uncertainty, the 131-minute delay, the all-clear that comes too soon) surface where you can read them across institutions and decades.
Chapter 1
Active Shooters
The cases that rewrote the playbook.
If a single incident can be said to have created the modern campus alert, it is the Virginia Tech shooting of April 16, 2007. A 22-year-old student killed two people in West Ambler Johnston Hall at 7:15 AM. The first…
- BSUShots fired near Linden Street and Rex Street, then no ongoing threat
- COMLockdown for a reported shooting near the main campus, then cleared
- WFUPolice clear a coliseum parking-lot shooting with no ongoing threat
Chapter 2
Bomb Threats & Swatting
The language of uncertainty.
Bomb threats and swatting calls force a problem that active-shooter alerts never have: the threat is almost always not real, and the institution knows that statistically as it composes the message. The alerts in this…
- HarvardBomb threat closes Memorial Hall
- U of USwatting emails targeting selected campus offices
- SUUSuspicious package prompts evacuation of the Skaggs Center
Chapter 3
Hazardous Materials & Infrastructure
When the building itself is the threat.
Gas leaks, chemical spills, infrastructure failures, and fires occupy a quieter corner of this archive (771 cases) but they are also the genre where institutional alert language is at its clearest. The reason is…
- PrattManhole explosions and smoke, avoid Myrtle Avenue
- FGCUGarage reopens after a vehicle fire, with damaged spaces still blocked
- PittSmoke inside a residence closes a street corner until it reopens
Chapter 4
Severe Weather
Nature's emergencies on campus.
Weather is the genre that taught American universities how to communicate over hours and days, not seconds and minutes. The 2,784 cases in this chapter document tornado warnings, hurricane evacuations, severe storms,…
- GCSCCampuses reopen for normal operations after the hurricane
- Bishop StateTropical storm closes every campus for two days
- FAMURemote morning classes, a noon dismissal, and shelter during a hurricane
Chapter 5
Interpersonal Violence & Sex Offenses
The timely-warning cases of everyday campus safety.
Most of the 1,239 cases in this chapter sit under one Clery Act category, the timely warning, and that legal category is the reason the chapter exists as a discrete genre. A timely warning is not the same thing as an…
- ClemsonTimely warning after fondling reported in the campus library
- TempleRobbery with a gun on the 1600 block of West Berks Street, then cleared
- CSUFSuspect contacted after a reported sexual assault in campus housing
Chapter 6
Property Crime
The everyday work of the timely warning.
The 674 cases in this chapter are the ones nobody remembers: a laptop taken from a library, a catalytic converter cut loose in a parking garage, a residence-hall door forced overnight. Almost all of them arrived as…
- TXSTRoom burglary with an indecent assault, suspect not located
- UCSDA secured bicycle is taken from the Rita Atkinson bike room
- UNHTimely warning for a stolen car and two scooters
Chapter 7
Missing Persons
A distinct alert genre under HEOA 2008.
The 18 cases in this chapter are a small but distinct corner of the archive. Missing-student notifications are governed by the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (HEOA), not by the Clery Act, and the legal…
- HarvardMissing person last seen at the Science Center
- UPRRPMissing student last seen at Parking T Monday morning
- UMaineEmergency notification for missing-person search near campus
Chapter 8
Other Emergencies
Edge cases that reveal the most.
The 1,070 cases in this chapter are the ones that don't fit cleanly into any of the other seven categories: police activity that was not active-shooter or armed-person, building lockdowns triggered by something other…
- UARKA threatening call at Silas Hunt is ruled a hoax after a brief lock
- TemplePolice activity on a North 12th Street block, then cleared
- BSUPolice activity near Christy Woods ends with no threat
Where these categories come from
The chapters are this archive’s own editorial groupings, built from the incident types recorded in the case files. Where warning science offers a published structure, they align with it: the Warning Lexicon, the message-design framework developed by Dr. Jeannette Sutton and colleagues, organizes its 48 hazards as spanning atmospheric, technological, biological, and human-induced events
. Severe Weather gathers the atmospheric events, along with the earthquakes and wildfires this archive files beside them for reading convenience; Hazardous Materials & Infrastructure collects the technological ones; the public-health thread inside Other Emergencies covers the biological; and the threat chapters (Active Shooters, Bomb Threats & Swatting) document human-induced events, both of which appear among the lexicon’s hazards.
Two chapters have no counterpart there, on purpose. The Warning Lexicon grew out of research on Wireless Emergency Alerts, so the report-driven crime notice the Clery Act requires of campuses sits outside its scope: Property Crime and much of Interpersonal Violence & Sex Offenses follow the Clery Act’s own crime categories instead, and Missing Persons follows its own statute (HEOA 2008). A scheduled system test fits no chapter and is left unassigned rather than forced into one.
The whole collection is also browsable this way: The Archive by Event Class maps every case against these classes, shows each incident type’s assignment, and opens any of it in search.
Sutton, J., Olson, M. K., & Waugh, N. A. (2024). “The Warning Lexicon: A Multiphased Study to Identify, Design, and Develop Content for Warning Messages.” Natural Hazards Review, 25(1). doi:10.1061/NHREFO.NHENG-1900. Dr. Sutton’s research program and practitioner resources are introduced on the Message Anatomy page. This archive is independent of Dr. Sutton and her research group; the alignment is this project’s own reading of her published work.