Emergency Management and Evacuation Procedures

The Emergency Action Plan is a guide to provide the faculty, staff, and students with an emergency and crisis management system when responding to major disasters or disturbances to the campus. All personnel designated to carry out specific responsibilities are trained to know and understand the College’s policies and procedures. The Emergency Action Plan was created to meet the Occupational Safety and Health Administration Standard 29 CFR 1910.38: Emergency Action Plan. The College will operate an Emergency Operations Center (EOC) in the event of an emergency. The Emergency Action Plan is designed to effectively coordinate the use of college and community resources to protect life and property both during and immediately following a major crisis or disturbance on or near the College. It shall be placed into operation whenever an emergency affecting the College cannot be controlled using daily operating procedures. All faculty and staff are informed of the Emergency Management Plan in the new hire introduction meeting.

Emergency Test and Evacuation Drills

The College shall participate in emergency tests or evacuation drills at least once per year to assess and evaluate emergency procedures and capabilities. The evacuation drills, table top exercises, and emergency preparedness training are done in partnership with the Newberry Police Department, Newberry County Sheriff’s Office, Newberry Fire Department, Newberry County EMS and others as needed.

Mass Notification System

The Mass Notification System used at Newberry College is e2campus. The system gives the ability to broadcasts immediate e-mail, text, and voice-mail messages to those who have chosen to participate in the program. The College will, without delay, 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, faculty, or staff occurring on the campus. Taking into account the safety of the community, the College will determine the content of the notification and initiate the notification system, unless issuing a notification will, in the professional judgment of responsible authorities, compromise efforts to assist a victim or to contain, respond to or otherwise mitigate the emergency. After the initial notification, follow-up information may be disseminated to the community via the messaging system or by e-mail, as needed.

Policy Statement for Mass Notification

 Reason for Policy — Establishes the guidelines by which the Newberry College alert system will be used for distribution of emergency alerts to students, faculty, and staff that would be affected directly by a critical incident which poses an imminent threat to their health or safety given their presence on College grounds and/or its surrounding areas.

Policy Statement—Newberry College maintains a subscription to a third party voice and e-mail messaging service (e2campus) the enables the college administrators to create voice and e-mail messages for emergency alerts to members of the College community and send them to a list of subscribed cell phone or other wireless device users, as well as e-mail accounts. Voice and e-mail message emergency alerts are one element of Newberry College’s comprehensive emergency response protocol that provides for rapid notification to students, faculty, and staff about situations or events that are occurring on campus and its surrounding areas. The service is designed for those conducting regular college related business in the immediate area. The emergency messaging service with which Newberry College has contracted requires users to opt-in to the service by subscribing their cell phone or wireless device number and e-mail address

Definition of Terms in Statement:

Emergency Alerts—Notifications regarding critical incidents that pose an imminent threat to the health or safety of the College community. Examples of such emergency incidents include, but are not limited to severe weather, hazardous materials incidents, and acts of criminal violence that broadly threaten the safety of the Newberry community.

E-mail and Voice Messages— Brief direct voice notifications received on a cellular phone or similar text-communication handheld device, and e-mails sent to the UP account and one other non-UP e-mail account.

Timely Alerts

Timely alerts include all Clery Act Crimes and must be considered by Newberry College to represent a serious or continuing threat to students and employees.

The decision to issue a Timely Warning is the responsibility of a team effort of the President, Dean of Students and the Director of Security after a disussion in a Timely Manner based on a case-by-case basis.

The Timely Warning is a Mass Notification by email, text messaging in order to reach the entire campus of an incident that poses a serious and continuing threat to students and employees.

Creation and Distribution of Emergency Messages and Timely Warnings

Designees from the following Newberry College offices have the authority to approve dissemination of emergency messages:

Office of the President
Office of the Dean of Students
Director of the Newberry College Campus Security

Once approved, emergency messages will be distributed by a trained system administrator to subscribers of the messaging service prior to adoption

A follow-up message will be sent when the emergency or warning is over.