Emergency incident on campus Oct. 25

There was an emergency incident on our main campus in the evening on Tuesday, Oct. 25 that is still being investigated. There were reports of an individual with a knife confronting students in Science Theatres. It was a real incident that represented a potential threat to the safety of our campus community. Campus Security worked with the Calgary Police Service to respond to the threat to protect students, faculty and staff. Fortunately, campus was given an all-clear at 9:24 pm and there are no reports of injuries.

If you have any information regarding the incident or the individual in question, please contact campus security at 403.220.5333 or sec.investigations@ucalgary.ca. 

Campus alert network 

As part of our response to the incident, at 8:48 p.m. Tuesday, the University of Calgary used its mass notification systems to alert the campus community. The UCalgary Alertus Emergency system worked as intended on desktop computers, issuing a notice advising of the situation. The mobile version of our UCalgary Alertus Emergency App did not operate as intended, despite routine testing of systems including a successful test one week ago. Our expectations for such systems are that they work every time, and we apologize to our campus community that they appear to have had challenges in this instance. 

Alertus is one of several ways we communicate in an emergency. In addition to the use of this notification system yesterday, the university also provided further messaging to the campus community via building mass notification systems, social media (i.e. Twitter), and a banner alert on the main UCalgary webpage. As part of our review of this incident, we will be exploring how our systems performed, including how to continue to improve communications of emergencies on campus. 

Resources 

We acknowledge that receiving an alert about a possible threat on campus is concerning.  For students, faculty or staff impacted by last night’s incident, we encourage you to reach out to Student Wellness Services and Staff Wellness for support.  

UCalgary has adopted a safety response strategy similar to the one utilized by many other post-secondary institutions throughout North America. We encourage all UCalgary community members to visit our Reacting to an Active Assailant site and review the PowerPoint presentation or watch our YouTube video to ensure you are prepared with the best response strategies. 

Campus is our home. We study here, we work here and we live here. Keeping you safe is our top priority.