Michigan State University issued an apology Tuesday afternoon after campus police accidentally issued an emergency notification that incited panic and confusion among students, faculty, staff and parents.
In a letter penned by MSU President Kevin Guskiewicz and MSU Department of Police and Public Safety Chief of Police Mike Yankowski, they wrote that the message was inadvertently sent during a routine system test by MSU’s Security Operations Center.
"We understand how emotionally activating this incident might have been for members of our university community, and we sincerely apologize for the error," Guskiewicz and Yankowski said.
The letter went on to explain that the emergency alert was accidentally sent through the live alerting system during a monthly routine test by the SOC to "evaluate the university’s emergency notification tools in a designated test environment."
"This was human error," Guskiewicz and Yankowski said. "We are confident that our alert system is in no way compromised."
In response to this blunder, the letter outlined several steps the public safety department will be taking to avoid future errors.
Those steps include implementing additional safeguards to ensure test messages are not sent through live channels, conducting a review of how alerts are authorized and look at reviewing the software the department uses to issue alerts.
The emergency alert, sent out Tuesday morning mere days before the third anniversary of the Feb. 13, 2023 campus shooting, alerted recipients to an "active violence incident." Other messages specified that the alert was only a drill.
One minute after the initial notification, a second message was sent, stating that the emergency notification was sent in "error" and to "please disregard" it. This rapid correction led to contradictory signals among recipients, with students receiving phone calls and emails alerting them for minutes even after the correction was sent out. Adding to the confusion was the fact that the messages contained discrepancies between each other.
For some, the word "drill" was omitted from the initial alert they received, causing them to fear an actual active violence incident was occurring. That notification plainly read, "Emergency! Active violence incident at the MSU East Lansing Campus. Avoid the area."
