Faculty members at four universities or more nationwide, including Michigan Technological University, received emails threatening an active shooter situation earlier this week. Mike Bath, director of NMU Public Safety and Police Services, said that while no Northern faculty received this notification, the email can serve NMU faculty and staff as a reminder of what to do should they ever receive a threat.

According to Bath, anyone on the NMU campus who is the recipient of a threat – whether it be mailed through the postal system, electronically transmitted or done in person – should contact Public Safety and Police Services immediately.

“There might be an inclination, especially with an emailed threat, to forward it to a department head or the Public Safety and Police Services general email account or even directly to me, but actually the correct first step is to make sure that you are in contact with a person about the threat,” said Bath.  “We don’t want to take the chance that your emailing someone who may be out of the office at that time or to an email box that is only checked periodically throughout the day. Make sure you’ve connected and talked with someone, ideally someone at Public Safety and Police Services, but if that’s not possible then your department head or dean.”

The number to reach Public Safety, which is manned 24 hours a day and 365 days a year, is 227-2151.

The threat that was sent out to the MTU and other faculty members Monday came from the address rbhjutgh@gmail.com and was sent around 1:40 p.m. with a message that read, “I am here to inform you that the next couple of days I will break in to the campus and will kill as many people as I can until the police arrives.” The Tech campus was informed of the threat and notified that police presence on campus was increased.

Because the threat was known to have been sent to at least four campuses and did not seem to focus on a specific campus, none of the universities closed operations.  In February 2011, Northern locked down campus when a similar threat identified NMU and specific members of university community in a post to a website. At the time of Northern’s closure, which came around the start of university business hours, it was unknown that the same threat had been made against other universities.

“The first thing a university in such cases is to evaluate the credibility of the threat,” said Bath. “When you can’t quickly determine the credibility level, it is prudent to take precautionary measures. That’s what happened here in 2011.”

Currently, Northern’s communication to the campus during an emergency situation or a threat includes messages via:

NMU’s emergency text alert system campus-wide email NMU home web page; Public Safety and Police Services home page and other web pages electronic facility display boards NMU’s fire alarm system, which has both alarm and audio messaging capabilities Charter Cable Channel 20 (full screen) and Channel 13 (scroll) B-R-R-R line (227-BRRR, 227-2777) Computer “barge in” system, which freezes any NMU computers using the NMU network at the time of the emergency with the safety steps message reports sent to media outlets for public distribution

Of all of NMU’s communication tools, the text alert system provides the quickest messaging, says Bath.  Northern’s emergency text alert system is available to all students, faculty, staff and family members of current NMU community members (parents of students, spouses of employees, etc.) at no charge from the university. The only cost might be a user’s cell phone carrier, depending on the text messaging rate of one’s plan. Signing up for the alerts takes about 2 minutes and is available at nmu.edu/alert. Northern only uses it’s text alert system for NMU emergencies, snow day announcements and emergency system testing.

“Speed of communication and accurate information is key in an emergency,” said Bath.  “It’s vital that someone on campus who knows of a potential emergency situation communicate as quickly and directly as possible with Public Safety and Police Services. On the flip side, communicating safety steps to the campus community is a top priority of Public Safety and Police Services and the NMU Emergency Response Team during a crisis.”

As happened with NMU’s 2011 threat, this week’s emailed threat was traced by federal agencies to international distribution points. Multiple agencies continue to investigate the situation, according to Bath.

Bath said Public Safety and Police Services staff are available for any questions campus community members have about threats or other emergency situations.

This was written by Cindy Paavola.