Campus & community, Campus news

WarnMe moves to opt-out this week

By Public Affairs

A change is being made to WarnMe, UC Berkeley’s alert and warning service: now, all active students, staff, faculty and affiliates with a CalNet directory entry will be included unless they choose not to be. This change will take effect starting Friday, March 16. WarnMe alerts are sent by email, text or phone in the event of a major threat to health or safety on campus.

The change is being instituted in order to ensure that more people participate in WarnMe, according to a message sent out by campus administrators. The system “is critical to protecting lives in the event of a life-threatening emergency on campus,” said the message from Harry Le Grande, vice chancellor for student affairs; Ron Coley, associate vice chancellor for business and administrative services; and Claire Holmes, associate vice chancellor for public affairs.

Starting Friday, March 16, when the campus activates WarnMe it will send a message to every official email address in the CalNet directory, typically a berkeley.edu address. If mail is automatically forwarded to another account, the WarnMe message will be sent there, and any previous contact preferences will be maintained.

Staff, faculty and students who are not already signed up for WarnMe will receive an email notification that a WarnMe account has been created for them.

Anyone seeking to change or add contact information can go to the WarnMe website (https://warnme.berkeley.edu) and log in as a student or faculty/staff member. If you wish to opt out of WarnMe, you can also do so beginning Friday by logging in through the WarnMe website and scrolling down the page. Please note that it can take up to 24 hours before a new account or changes to an existing account take effect.

WarnMe is just one part of the campus’s emergency communications system. In all emergencies, natural disasters and other crises, information will also be posted on the campus home page or on the backup off-site emergency website. It will also be recorded on the off-site, toll-free emergency number (1-800-705-9998), campus radio station (KALX 90.7 FM), and posted to @UC Berkeley Twitter and the UC Berkeley Facebook page.