Story by Bailey Moreton, graphics by Paloma Callo with files by Temur Durrani.
On Jan. 28, Sarah Pledge Dickinson was sitting in a French class in Tory Building at Carleton University when the projector suddenly lit up, and a message from Campus Safety was displayed.
“I thought this was weird, because normally we don’t use the projector in class,” Dickinson, a third-year student, said.
On the screen was a message from the Emergency Notification System (ENS) operated by Campus Safety at Carleton.
“Carleton Safety advises of an active attacker(s) on campus. Please remain calm; take safe action (shelter or evacuate).”
For 40 minutes that afternoon, students and faculty believed there was an active attacker situation happening on campus.
“Our professor just resumed teaching,” she said. “She told us to put our phones away, put our technology away and told us to focus, because a lot of people were checking with family members if they could be picked up from school or asking their friends if they were okay.”
Brad Evoy, an employee for the Carleton chapter of the Ontario Public Research and Interest Group (OPIRG), said the staff in his office had no idea the situation was ongoing and didn’t receive any notification.
OPIRG Carleton is an independent campus group that has an office located in the school’s University Centre.
“Most folks are not direct employees of the university, are not directly informed about any of these sorts of things. So we received information from panicked students.” – Brad Evoy, an employee for the Carleton chapter of the Ontario Public Research and Interest Group (OPIRG)
Dickinson said while she was in her class, her professor asked the class what they thought they should do.
“Clearly, nobody had ever told her [what to do],” she said. “So, we just kind of sat there and waited to see what would happen.”
At 2:20 p.m. that day, the university confirmed that this message was released in error. A statement was sent out using the ENS, which said that while the email templates were being updated, the alert was accidentally sent out to the community instead of saved.
“The university profusely apologies for the error and the resulting upset that was caused,” the statement said. “We can reassure you that everything is safe and under control.”
“Certainly what was made clear to us is that the community does not know where to find these procedures or know what to do.” – Brian Billings, director of Campus Safety at Carleton.
Over two weeks later, in his monthly blog on Carleton’s website, Carleton president Benoit-Antoine Bacon published an action plan for improving the ENS and awareness around emergency procedures in the community.
“Thank God it was a false alarm—it’s a good thing we have these systems in place. But as soon as you have an alarm that could go off, it’s a possibility to have a false alarm,” Bacon told the Charlatan. “That being said, we should have a system that minimizes human error.”
What went wrong?
When updating a template for a message to be sent out to the university via the ENS, an “inadvertent keystroke” by a member of Campus Safety led to the message being sent out, rather than being saved.
According to Billings, they were made aware of the mistake immediately, but a delay occurred in issuing a correction to the original message because of a “technical error” with the ENS.
“The system did not respond appropriately after the message was launched,” he said. “It actually locked after the message was sent, and it took us 20 minutes in order to get the message out from the system.”
This is something that is being addressed with Mitel, the company in charge of managing the ENS, Billings said. In that interim period, Billings said Campus Safety used social media and reached out to local media and Ottawa Police to try and spread the message that it was a false alarm.
Billings said they also found there was a problem with the technology which resulted in many students either not receiving the message at all or not receiving it until up to 24 hours after the alert was sent.
“Text messaging isn’t always given priority over the networks. Voice is still given priority. The text messages go out when there are available data packets within the system, so when you’re trying to send out multiple text messages, it’s kind of just, ‘send and pray.’ We’re reliant on the carriers to basically deliver those messages.” – Brian Billings
Dickinson said when the first email was sent warning of the false attacker, there weren’t clear instructions on what should be done.
“The message was really cryptic,” she said. “So it was really hard to tell what was going on, and there was no additional information.”
Billings said that the information for what to do in a situation such as this has always been available online—it’s just that many people didn’t know where to look for it.
“Many people just ignored it,” he said. “That’s what we got from feedback: many people didn’t know the procedures were there until they went looking for it.”
Billings added that the system’s online location and messages need work—perhaps in the form of a short video.
“If people are driven to the website to look at [the procedures], it needs to be something that is a little bit more impactful,” said Billings.
Evoy said lack of clear communication is a wider problem he’s seen with the university notifying the community about safety concerns, mentioning as an example elevators which are frequently out-of-service without the university community being notified.
“It says a lot about what the university is actually willing to put in, in terms of effort for access and clarity and safety when they are more concerned about developing media press releases than actually caring about people.” 
Evoy added that the university has not reached out to his group to clarify how they can sign up for the ENS.
According to Billings, organizations independent of the school who work on campus are able to sign up for the ENS on Carleton’s website. He added that a number of off-campus employees such as those from Environment Canada have already signed up for the ENS.
Billings added that independent groups can download and fill out an affiliate form to subscribe to the ENS.
Unique safety procedures for universities are challenging to develop because campuses are complex environments, he said.
“Lockdowns clearly work in public schools because you’re dealing with one building. When that doesn’t work is when you have multiple buildings,” he said. “Carleton has around 50.”
Instead, Billings said Campus Safety advises students to follow a program known as “Run, Hide, and Fight.” Billings said it is “advisable that you evacuate” if possible, but that this may not always be the best course of action depending on where you are located. Going into lockdown would be the second best option. The “Fight” step is the absolute last resort, where you are forced to confront an attacker.
How can it be fixed?
Billings said Campus Safety has since approached a number of organizations on campus, including the Carleton University Academic Staff Association (CUASA), the Graduate Student Association (GSA) and contract instructors on campus to look at opportunities to provide training and greater awareness of what those procedures are.
Billings said they are also striving to update the ENS to send out push notifications to all phones which have the CU Mobile app, as this makes information more accessible to students and staff. Point five of Bacon’s action plan encouraged all members of the Carleton community to download the app.
He added that information on the safety protocols is also easier to access on the app than online. 
Outside the action plan, Billings emphasized creating greater awareness of the protocols and the resources which are already available.
Suzanne Blanchard, Carleton vice-president (students and enrolment), said the university has tried in the past to make it mandatory for students to submit contact information to the university, but this has not always worked.
“Basically what we’re trying to promote for their own safety, is [that] it is better to give us their information,” she said. “We can put as many areas as possible where giving information needs to be mandatory, but it is an awareness that needs to be done.”
Dickinson said since the system was faulty this time, people may be less likely to trust it in the future.
“I think people won’t react quite as quickly, because if it were really happening, that there were a dangerous situation, next time it may happen that people might not pay that much attention to it, which could be pretty dangerous.”
