Matthew Miller

mrmiller@lsj.com

Michigan State University sent out nearly 70,000 emergency alert messages after a 19-year-old student was stabbed outside the Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity house early Sunday morning.

Kellie Riter got three of them, phone, text and e-mail – four if you count the fact that the university's emergency alert system also called her mother in Battle Creek, who then called Riter in a bit of a panic.

"I half expected to hear a thunk on my window as a carrier pigeon tried to get in," said the MSU junior, who was watching a movie in her apartment in Okemos when the alerts came at around 2 a.m.

Riter said she appreciates the warnings. She'd just like to be warned a little less, maybe once or twice per incident. Like many others who found their phones ringing in the middle of the night, she was puzzled about why the university had pushed out the warning through so many channels.

The reason has to do with changes made to a federal law known as the Clery Act in response to a mass shooting on the campus of Virginia Tech in 2007 and more recent changes in how MSU interprets them.

The Jeanne Clery Act, named for a Lehigh University freshman who was raped and murdered in her dorm room in 1986, requires universities to gather and report information about crime on or near campus.

Amendments approved in 2008 and implemented in 2010, require that universities receiving federal funds have a policies to "immediately notify the campus community upon the confirmation of a significant emergency or dangerous situation involving an immediate threat to the health or safety of students or staff occurring on the campus."

According to Capt. Penny Fischer, who heads the Support Services Division of the MSU police, "The sort of incident that occurred early Sunday morning is one that triggers us to send an 'emergency alert' to all of the MSU community."

And when it is deemed an emergency alert, she said, "we send it across all communication platforms we have in our alerting system."

And it is sent to the entire campus community: students, faculty and staff.

MSU came under criticism in February of last year, when it sent an alert about the the murder of sophomore Dominique Nolff in an apartment less than two blocks from campus more than two hours after the incident occurred.

Fischer said that "improvements in our own protocols of dissemination" and shifting interpretations of the Clery Act have have convinced the university's leaders that the reporting requirements shouldn't stop at the borders of campus.

"We do that for incidents in a close proximity that have the potential to pose a threat to our own community," Fischer said.

The incident Sunday morning happened at 334 Michigan Ave., just across the street from campus. The student who was stabbed suffered only minor injuries. Police are still looking for the suspect, described as a black man in his 20s, about 6-foot-3-inches tall, last seen wearing a gray sweatshirt and red jeans.

The alert that night set off a flurry of concern and a bit of annoyance from those awoken in the middle of the night, but it also drew praise on social media.

If the university is going to change anything, Fischer said, it would be remind the campus community about the emergency alert system a little more often, say once a semester, and to make the point that individuals can specify the means by which they'd like to be contacted in an emergency.

But carrier pigeon isn't an option.

Change your contact information

Michigan State University students can see what emergency contact information they are listing, and alter that information, by going to www.reg.msu.edu and clicked on the "Emergency Contact System" link under the "Student Services" tab at the top of the page.