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Update on Emergency Communication Channels

Purchase College Emergency Communication Update

To protect the health and safety of our campus community, Purchase College strives for continuous improvement of our emergency communications systems and processes. This fall the Emergency Response Team (ERT) added a new mass-alerting system – Rave - that provides more flexibility in sending alerts.

The new Purchase College Mass-Alert system will only be used for emergency notifications. To ensure that the system is always ready at a moment’s notice, the College will also conduct one “Test Alert” each semester.

Students: Emergency notifications will always be sent to students. Students may also identify up to two additional contacts (parents, guardians, or others) to receive emergency notifications. Parents should remind their students to add or verify parent contact information by visiting myHeliotrope and following the “Emergency Contact Information” link. Students will continue to be required to review their Emergency Contact information once per semester.

Employees should also verify their contact information at least once every 6 months by going to . At least two “emergency contacts” are required – one “self” contact, and one other. Mass alerts will be sent by phone, text, and email, and it is important that you receive these alerts immediately, so please take a few moments and update or verify your contact information now.

For serious emergencies:

For serious situations that pose an immediate threat, you can expect to receive a Mass-Alert notification if there is an emergency on campus such as a fire, bomb threat, shooting, chemical spill, illness, or potential danger due to a major weather event, such as a hurricane or other major storm, or incidents of equal impact.

Mass-alert notifications for serious emergencies will be communicated on all channels – phone, text message, email, web, and social network sites.

The Mass-Alert message may direct you to Purchase email, hotline, website, or other outlets for updates. Additional Mass-Alert messages may follow as appropriate to the situation.

Moderately serious incidents: For situations that do not pose an immediate threat to the campus such as a crime, accident, or non-life threatening medical outbreak, the College will send Mass-Alert email to students and parents - and the information may also be posted to the Web and social channels.

Weather related cancellations or delays: For winter storms, icy roads, tropical storms, or high wind conditions, the College may send Mass-Alert text messages and email - and the information will also be posted to the Web and social networks.

Updates on closings and delays will also be posted on the Weather Emergency Hotline at (914) 251-7500, and circulated to media outlets such as News 12, WFAS, WCBS, WHUD.

Identifying Purchase College Mass-Alert Notifications
Mass-Alerts sent from Purchase College will have the following characteristics:

Mass-Alert Email Source Address will always be one of the following:

Purchase@getrave.com
Purchase@ravewireless.com
Purchase@ravemobilesafety.com

Mass-Alert Text Messages will originate from “226787” (“Short Code”)

Mass-Alert Voice Messages will originate from (914) 251-6000