CU Police Department expands emergency alert system to include off-campus areas where students live

In Boulder, the CU Police Department is expanding its emergency alert system to include several off-campus areas where students live and hang out. It all comes after a shooting on University Hill last month, in which students said the university didn't send anything out.  

"For a while, it kind of felt like police here weren't taking us seriously, so now that there's actually some progress, I'm really happy we did raise those concerns," said Téa Marder, a senior at the University of Colorado Boulder.  

More than a month after gunfire echoed across Boulder's University Hill, Marder still remembers the anxiety she and her roommates felt.  

"We were definitely concerned," Marder said. "We were locking our doors; we were kind of even scared to walk outside."  

Marder lives just a few blocks away from the scene of the shooting, but that morning never got an emergency alert from the university. Instead, an advisory alert went out hours later, a decision she and many other students questioned on social media and to CBS News Colorado.  

"I definitely did raise my concerns to them, and a couple of my roommates did too," she said.  

Now, CU Police are making changes, announcing several off-campus neighborhoods are eligible for alerts, including University Hill, Goss Grove, and a large area east of 28th Street. 

CU has three levels of emergency notifications: CU emergency alerts, CU safety alerts, and CU advisories. All CU emergency alerts are specifically for confirmed, life-threatening events on or near campus.  

"The shooting on University Hill on October second would now be part of our expanded alert boundaries," said Christine Mahoney, a spokeswoman for CU Police.  

According to Mahoney, the updated alert boundaries are not the only change. Soon, the university will upload student, faculty, and staff contact information into the countywide emergency alert system, known as Everbridge.  

Everbridge is used to send advisories, warnings, and orders to take action during life-threatening situations such as police activity, fires, floods and other natural disasters in the city of Boulder and unincorporated Boulder County. The system also shares critical weather alerts, amber alerts, and more.  

"I hope that our community knows that we are listening to them, and we've been able to deploy these upgrades or improvements to our alert protocols very rapidly," Mahoney said.  

Marder says it's not just progress, but a necessary change. 

"I'm really happy that we did raise those concerns because obviously, they took them seriously," she said.  

The alerts will go out automatically via email, but students and staff can subscribe for texts too.  

To ensure receipt of alerts by text, CU is reminding students to add or update their mobile phone numbers in the Buff Portal, while employees can review and update their contact info via MyCUInfo. 

Those same students and staff will also likely get a text next week about the countywide alert system, and whether they want to opt-in.