Notification to the YSU community about an Immediate Threat
YSU will immediately notify the campus community upon confirmation of a significant emergency or dangerous situation involving an immediate threat to the health or safety of students and/or employees occurring on the campus. Examples of significant emergencies or dangerous situations are: active shooter, fire, outbreak of a serious illness, approaching extreme weather condition (i.e. tornado), earthquake, gas leak, terrorist incident, armed intruder, bomb threat, civil unrest or rioting, explosion, nearby chemical or hazardous waste spill.
In the event of a potential emergency or dangerous situation that poses an immediate threat to the health or safety of some or all members of the YSU community, YSUPD and/or the Office of Marketing and Communications will immediately notify the campus community of the situation. YSUPD and/or M&C will, without delay and taking into account the safety of the community, determine the content of the notification and initiate the notification system, unless issuing a notification will, in the judgment of the first responders (including, but not limited to YSUPD, Youngstown Police Department, Youngstown Fire and Emergency Medical Services), compromise the efforts to assist a victim or to contain, respond to, or otherwise mitigate the emergency.
YSUPD and/or M&C will use some or all of the systems described below to communicate the threat to the YSU community or to the appropriate segment of the community, if the threat is limited to a particular building or segment of the population. The entire campus community will be notified when there is at least the potential that a very large segment of the community will be affected by a situation, or when a situation threatens the operation of the campus as a whole. The situation will be continually assessed to determine if additional segments of the campus should be notified.
Some or all of the following notification methods will be used:
- Penguin Alert emergency text messages and emails.
- YSU campus-wide mass communications and alarm voice broadcast system.
- YSU homepage (www.ysu.edu).
- University Facebook and Instagram pages.
- WYSU 88.5 FM, the official radio source of YSU.
Members of the larger community outside campus will receive information about a campus emergency via many of the same methods listed above. In addition, the University will disseminate information via local news media (TV, radio and newspaper).
Those responsible for carrying out the actions above include:
- Confirmation of an emergency: YSUPD.
- Content of message/segment of campus to be notified: YSUPD and/or Office of Marketing and Communications.
- Initiation of the notification system: YSUPD and/or Office of Marketing and Communications.