Campus Alert Archive

Aggregate Data

Archive Statistics

3,803 verbatim alerts · 4,392 alert messages · 539 institutions · 1969–2026

Two patterns dominate this archive. First, roughly 29% of cases occur in the August–October return-to-campus window, a seasonal cluster driven by move-in incidents, opening-week events, and fall sports. Second, verbatim confirmation climbs sharply after 2018: among alerts dated 2018 and later, 87% are word-for-word confirmed as Twitter/X archive recovery and university alert-page indexing finally make exact transmitted text recoverable.

The charts below cover incident type, year, state, institution type, resolution, and Clery category. Above all, they show how much of the archive we have recovered word-for-word. This archive is about the exact wording and the sequence of the messages, not response-time analytics; counts here reflect what is documented and findable, not real-world frequency.

About these numbers

This archive is a limited, AI-assembled sample of campus emergency alerts, not a complete or randomly drawn census. Every chart below describes what has been documented here so far, which is shaped by what sources are publicly findable and what has been added to date. Please read these as patterns within this archive, not as statistically representative measures of US campuses overall, and avoid drawing population-level conclusions from them. Spot something wrong or missing? You can help correct or expand it.

Looking for more than counts? The Dataset page is the archive’s citable landing: versioned downloads, the archive-level citation and codebook, and the collection’s scope and limits.

Tool · Message structure

Message Element Analyzer

Go beyond the counts: see which of the six warning-message elements (source, hazard, location, guidance, time, impact) each verbatim first alert actually includes.

4,392
Alert messages
Verbatim3,803 · 87%
3,803 of 4,392 alert messages (87%) are verbatim-confirmed.
539
Institutions
55
States & Territories

50 states · 4 territories

2.2
Alerts per case

avg messages in a sequence

2,026
Documented Cases

1969–2026

Geographic Coverage

Cases Across All 55 Jurisdictions

50 U.S. states, Washington D.C., and 4 territories, every corner of American higher education.

How to read this: Tile shading shows the cases documented here per state, which tracks collection effort and findability, not per-capita risk or any state's true number of incidents.

55 states & territories documented · stronger blue = more cases · tap any tile to see its cases

AK: 2 casesME: 10 casesWI: 17 casesVT: 5 casesNH: 12 casesWA: 28 casesID: 8 casesMT: 6 casesND: 2 casesMN: 77 casesIL: 77 casesMI: 38 casesNY: 134 casesMA: 75 casesRI: 63 casesOR: 19 casesNV: 10 casesWY: 2 casesSD: 2 casesIA: 23 casesIN: 45 casesOH: 53 casesPA: 250 casesNJ: 29 casesCT: 11 casesCA: 137 casesUT: 9 casesCO: 26 casesNE: 13 casesMO: 16 casesKY: 20 casesWV: 3 casesVA: 72 casesMD: 21 casesDE: 3 casesAZ: 40 casesNM: 11 casesKS: 4 casesAR: 7 casesTN: 17 casesNC: 148 casesSC: 104 casesDC: 36 casesOK: 18 casesLA: 53 casesMS: 27 casesAL: 21 casesGA: 38 casesHI: 10 casesTX: 98 casesFL: 68 casesGU: 1 caseMP: 2 casesAS: 0 casesPR: 3 casesVI: 2 cases
Cases:
None
1-9
10-29
30-59
60+
Documented cases per state/territory
State/TerritoryCases
PA250
NC148
CA137
NY134
SC104
TX98
IL77
MN77
MA75
VA72
FL68
RI63
OH53
LA53
IN45
AZ40
MI38
GA38
DC36
NJ29
WA28
MS27
CO26
IA23
MD21
AL21
KY20
OR19
OK18
WI17
TN17
MO16
NE13
NH12
NM11
CT11
ME10
NV10
HI10
UT9
ID8
AR7
MT6
VT5
KS4
PR3
DE3
WV3
MP2
SD2
AK2
ND2
VI2
WY2
GU1

Incident Breakdown

What Triggers Campus Alerts

Distribution across 40+ incident types: from active shooters to weather emergencies, gas leaks, and public-health crises.

How to read this: This is the mix of incidents we happen to have documented, not how often each type actually occurs on campuses.

Type Distribution

By Incident Type

top 10
  • shooting231
  • robbery193
  • bomb threat114
  • burglary94
  • severe weather92
  • sexual assault87
  • police activity83
  • armed person77
  • other71
  • swatting68

What to notice: shooting-adjacent reports dominate the record. The cases that rewrote alert language live in the Active Shooters chapter.

Top 10 incident types by case count
InstitutionCases
shooting231
robbery193
bomb threat114
burglary94
severe weather92
sexual assault87
police activity83
armed person77
other71
swatting68

Year Trend

Cases by Year

2007–2026
2393594782007: 420072008: 12009: 120092010: 12011: 120112012: 52013: 1020132014: 122015: 1120152016: 332017: 4320172018: 512019: 7020192020: 532021: 6320212022: 2232023: 24520232024: 4782025: 43420252026: 284

What to notice: coverage is densest where original alert text still survives online. Browse the most recent cases to read today's alert language, or read the five eras that shaped this curve.

Data for chart: Cases by Year
LabelCount
20074
20081
20091
20101
20111
20125
201310
201412
201511
201633
201743
201851
201970
202053
202163
2022223
2023245
2024478
2025434
2026284

Eras of campus alerting

Five moments explain most of the shape above: two federal laws, one massacre, and two waves of threats that never materialized.

1990

The Clery Act

Campus crime disclosure becomes federal law: colleges must publish crime statistics and warn their communities about ongoing threats. Every timely warning in this archive traces its legal DNA here.

Browse the 1990s →
2007

Virginia Tech and the ENS era

Thirty-two people are killed on April 16, 2007; the first campuswide email arrives more than two hours after the first shootings. The massacre makes mass-notification systems all but universal within two years.

Read the case →
2008

HEOA

The Higher Education Opportunity Act writes emergency notification into federal law: immediate notification upon confirmation of a significant emergency, publicly disclosed procedures, and an annual test.

Browse the policy archive →
2022

The HBCU bomb-threat wave

Dozens of historically Black colleges and universities receive coordinated bomb threats in January and February 2022, many timed to the first day of Black History Month.

See the 2022 HBCU cases →
2023

The swatting era

False active-shooter calls hit campuses at scale, forcing full lockdown responses to threats that turn out not to exist. The archive marks these honestly: resolved as hoax or unfounded, never as non-events.

Browse hoax and unfounded cases →

Institution Lens

Who Files the Most Alerts

Institution type, Clery classification, and incident resolution: three views of the same archive from different regulatory angles.

How to read this: This reflects which institutions and categories are represented in the archive so far; it over-represents some types (such as large universities) and under-represents others.

Institution Type

By Institution Type

  • public r11,053
  • private r1434
  • community college126
  • public r293
  • public masters88
  • hbcu72
  • private liberal arts49
  • private r241
  • private masters27
  • public bachelors13
  • private bachelors12
  • territory7
  • technical college6
  • for profit2
  • tribal college1
  • public1
  • military1

What to notice: large publics are over-represented because their alert archives are public and indexed. Browse by institution to find the community colleges, HBCUs, and tribal colleges the archive actively balances toward.

Cases by institution type
InstitutionCases
public r11,053
private r1434
community college126
public r293
public masters88
hbcu72
private liberal arts49
private r241
private masters27
public bachelors13
private bachelors12
territory7
technical college6
for profit2
tribal college1
public1
military1

Clery Classification

By Clery Category

6509751,300emergency notification: 1,300emergen…timely warning: 498timely …advisory: 190advisorymissing student: 14missing…community notification: 12communi…test: 12test

What to notice: timely warnings are a genre of their own, composed hours after a crime rather than seconds into one. See the timely-warning chapter.

Data for chart: By Clery Category
LabelCount
emergency notification1,300
timely warning498
advisory190
missing student14
community notification12
test12

Outcome

By Resolution

335503670confirmed threat: 670confirm…under investigation: 485all clear: 204all cle…unfounded: 160contained: 156contain…confirmed hoax: 134ongoing: 107ongoingresolved: 28false alarm: 20false a…unknown: 15resolved safely: 4resolve…suspect apprehended: 3hoax: 3hoaxweather cleared: 3fatality: 2fatalityno impact confirmed: 2voluntary end: 2volunta…suspect not apprehended: 2suspect fled: 1suspect…suspect neutralized: 1

What to notice: many cases documented here as active threats resolved as hoax or unfounded. Read the hoax and unfounded cases for the language of standing down.

Data for chart: By Resolution
LabelCount
confirmed threat670
under investigation485
all clear204
unfounded160
contained156
confirmed hoax134
ongoing107
resolved28
false alarm20
unknown15
resolved safely4
suspect apprehended3
hoax3
weather cleared3
fatality2
no impact confirmed2
voluntary end2
suspect not apprehended2
suspect fled1
suspect neutralized1

Leaders & Patterns

States & Institutions in Focus

Top states by documentation volume, and the 12 most-represented institutions in the archive.

How to read this: 'Top' and 'most' here mean most-documented in this archive, which tracks how findable and well-covered a place is as much as any real-world frequency.

State Volume

Top States by Case Count

top 15 of 55
  • PA250
  • NC148
  • CA137
  • NY134
  • SC104
  • TX98
  • IL77
  • MN77
  • MA75
  • VA72
  • FL68
  • RI63
  • OH53
  • LA53
  • IN45

What to notice: state volume tracks collection effort as much as risk. The institutions index shows exactly what is documented where.

Top 15 states by number of documented cases
InstitutionCases
PA250
NC148
CA137
NY134
SC104
TX98
IL77
MN77
MA75
VA72
FL68
RI63
OH53
LA53
IN45

Institution Volume

Most-Represented Institutions

top 12 of 539
  • Temple · PA208
  • UNC · NC108
  • Columbia · NY81
  • Clemson · SC79
  • UMN · MN62
  • Brown · RI58
  • Illinois · IL43
  • USC · CA37
  • MIT · MA33
  • Tulane · LA33
  • OSU · OH26
  • South Carolina · SC21

What to notice: repeat appearances usually mean a well-indexed public alert archive, exactly the sources that make word-for-word recovery possible.

Top 12 institutions by number of documented cases, with state and case count.
InstitutionStateCases
TemplePA208
UNCNC108
ColumbiaNY81
ClemsonSC79
UMNMN62
BrownRI58
IllinoisIL43
USCCA37
MITMA33
TulaneLA33
OSUOH26
South CarolinaSC21

Long-Range View

The archive over time

Documented cases span decades. Coverage is densest for recent years, where alert text is easiest to recover.

How to read this: This reflects how findable and well-documented incidents are by era, not real-world frequency.

Long-Range View

Cases by Decade

1969–2026
8901,3351,7801960s: 11960s1970s: 11970s1990s: 11990s2000s: 62000s2010s: 2372010s2020s: 1,7802020s

What to notice: coverage thins before the SMS era. The chapter narratives trace how alert language evolved decade by decade.

Data for chart: Cases by Decade
LabelCount
1960s1
1970s1
1990s1
2000s6
2010s237
2020s1,780

Archive Authenticity

Verbatim Recovery Over Time

Each column is the total alert messages for that incident year, split into verbatim-confirmed (exact transmitted text) and reconstructed (paraphrased from secondary coverage).

How to read this: This tracks our own progress recovering exact alert wording; it is a measure of the archive itself, not a claim about campus alerts in general.

Authenticity Trend

Verbatim Recovery by Year

verbatimreconstructed
26953880710762011: 2 of 5 verbatim (40%)'112012: 9 of 17 verbatim (53%)'122013: 23 of 39 verbatim (59%)'132014: 22 of 34 verbatim (65%)'142015: 32 of 40 verbatim (80%)'152016: 48 of 59 verbatim (81%)'162017: 136 of 157 verbatim (87%)'172018: 127 of 156 verbatim (81%)'182019: 120 of 135 verbatim (89%)'192020: 94 of 112 verbatim (84%)'202021: 117 of 133 verbatim (88%)'212022: 339 of 385 verbatim (88%)'222023: 444 of 517 verbatim (86%)'232024: 920 of 1076 verbatim (86%)'242025: 820 of 923 verbatim (89%)'252026: 536 of 585 verbatim (92%)'26

What to notice: word-for-word recovery is this archive's core work. Browse every verbatim-confirmed case to read the exact transmitted text.

  • 2011: 2 of 5 alert messages verbatim-confirmed (40%).
  • 2012: 9 of 17 alert messages verbatim-confirmed (53%).
  • 2013: 23 of 39 alert messages verbatim-confirmed (59%).
  • 2014: 22 of 34 alert messages verbatim-confirmed (65%).
  • 2015: 32 of 40 alert messages verbatim-confirmed (80%).
  • 2016: 48 of 59 alert messages verbatim-confirmed (81%).
  • 2017: 136 of 157 alert messages verbatim-confirmed (87%).
  • 2018: 127 of 156 alert messages verbatim-confirmed (81%).
  • 2019: 120 of 135 alert messages verbatim-confirmed (89%).
  • 2020: 94 of 112 alert messages verbatim-confirmed (84%).
  • 2021: 117 of 133 alert messages verbatim-confirmed (88%).
  • 2022: 339 of 385 alert messages verbatim-confirmed (88%).
  • 2023: 444 of 517 alert messages verbatim-confirmed (86%).
  • 2024: 920 of 1076 alert messages verbatim-confirmed (86%).
  • 2025: 820 of 923 alert messages verbatim-confirmed (89%).
  • 2026: 536 of 585 alert messages verbatim-confirmed (92%).

The verbatim share climbs sharply in recent years as Twitter/X archive recovery and university alert-page indexing make exact wording recoverable. The 2018 inflection point tracks the widespread adoption of social-media alert channels.

Methodology Note

All figures derive from the live data/cases/ directory and recompute at build time. Verbatim confirmation requires a direct source URL; reconstructed alerts are clearly marked. Where a source documents the interval from incident to first alert, that timing is recorded on the case and included in exports. The descriptive counts on this page are plain build-time aggregation; the archive’s cross-corpus analytics layer is owned by Claude Fable 5.