Whoops! Columbia College Sends Out 'Violent Intruder' Alert Instead Of Weather Alert

By Samantha Abernethy in News on Mar 6, 2013 11:25PM

As the snow rapidly fell across Chicago on Tuesday, Columbia College decided to shut down the campus early and send students home. Using their emergency notification system, administrators sent out a notice that the campus would close at 3 p.m.

Well, that's what they meant to do.

Instead, the notification system sent out a "violent intruder" alert over the school's intercom and TV system, causing a bit of panic. The school scrambled to fix it by sending emails, texts and phone calls campus-wide

“Under normal circumstances, we would have issued an immediate ‘all clear’ message using the emergency notification system," associate vice president of Campus Safety and Security Robert Koverman wrote, "however, because of the malfunction, we could not rely on the system to deliver the correct message.”

College spokesman Steve Kauffman told the Tribune Tuesday evening that "he wasn’t sure whether the mistake was human or technological error."