A look back on concerns about Alert Carolina since the Aug. 28 shooting

Eight months have passed since the Aug. 28 on-campus shooting sparked safety concerns, and with no official changes made yet to UNC's Alert Carolina system, some UNC community members still hope to see updates.

The University is currently in the final stages of conducting a review of Alert Carolina and the Aug. 28 shooting, which is needed to make decisions about any necessary changes on campus including opportunities to enhance Alert Carolina, according to a statement from UNC Media Relations.

The system releases four types of notifications: emergency warning, crime alert, adverse conditions and informational. Media Relations said Alert Carolina messages are sent to all UNC emails; texted to phone numbers registered by students, faculty and staff; and notified through the publicly-accessible Carolina Ready Safety app.

Andrew Gary, a UNC senior and the 2023-24 chair of the Student Safety and Security Committee, said he has met with administrators to discuss Alert Carolina’s crisis messaging throughout the academic year.

Gary said he was in Lenoir Dining Hall during the Aug. 28 lockdown, and students often knew more about the incident than the dining hall's employees. He said he later learned through members of student government that this was partially due to English not being some of the employees’ primary language.

“I think there’s some pretty glaring issues with Alert Carolina, the first one being they only message in one language,” he said.

At the Sept. 8 Faculty Council meeting, council member Hélène de Fays voiced her concern about the lack of language accessibility during the lockdown.

“Being a Spanish professor, I found it a little bit disconcerting that so many people just did not have the right information,” de Fayes said.

She said, while not a personal issue, the lack of language options is a concern for the broader Spanish-speaking community on campus.

Harini Somanchi, former co-director for student wellness and safety, said student government sent out a “share your story” form to students in September to gain insight about student experiences and thoughts on campus safety. She said this was a chance to inform administrators about student concerns.

“People wish that TAs and professors had a more standard means of reaction and response to the Alert Carolina texts,” Somanchi said. “I think that we’ve all heard stories of professors who continued to teach and didn’t follow lockdown procedures, so that was a big concern.”

Gary said more specific messaging would be helpful for community members to know how to best protect themselves. He said the scripted “Emergency: Police report an armed and dangerous person on or near campus” message that was sent during both the August and September lockdowns is a vague statement for such a large campus.

Carter Kohl, a first-year student, said he thinks the Alert Carolina notifications sent during the August lockdown were sufficient but wishes there were more continuous updates while he sheltered in place in Dey Hall.

“I think something that really exacerbated a lot of the stress or trauma of that event for everyone that I was surrounded by was the fact that, I mean, rumors just flew,” Kohl said. “No one knew what was going on.”

Somanchi said the wording in Alert Carolina messages sent at the end of both lockdowns which said, “All clear. All clear. Resume normal activities,” was insensitive and students reported being confused about having to attend class.

“What happened isn’t normal, so you can’t just resume normal activities,” she said.

After discussing changes in Faculty Council and Department of Romance Languages meetings, de Fayes said campus safety changes have gone off the radar, and the campus community should have heard about progress being made. 

Media Relations said it is normal for an after-action review to be a lengthy process because of the deep level of analysis, detail and collaboration that goes into the process.

Gary said campus safety is not just about responding to singular incidents.

“It’s about how do you recover from that? How do you move forward from that?” he said. “And that takes a lot of time and a lot of investment in people.”

@dailytarheel

university@dailytarheel.com