WarnMe: Is This Even for Me?

A student toolkit for understanding and evaluating the emergency mass notification alert system at UC Berkeley and/or at your university. This toolkit was developed by centering those of us in the most need, as described by Angela Glover Blackwell’s “The Curb-Cut Effect.” It is the hope of the research team that university students, regardless of their experience and background, impacted by their school’s application of the Clery Act can better understand the system and what may need to be brought into student community discourse or, with deepened understanding, brought into student community discourse. The intent of this project is to disrupt data access power structures and invite all people to have the resources and information to improve their lives and the systems that impact the quality of their lives. A range of resources were applied or developed and then tested to serve as a type of toolkit or “roadmap” to evaluate university emergency notification systems for students and by students.

Motivation 

Over the last 30+ years, little empirical data has been gathered regarding the effectiveness of the Clery Act, enacted in 1990. One particular area of interest to our project is the student perceptions of the emergency notifications that UC Berkeley sends out, in part, to comply with a 2007 update to the Clery Act which was motivated by the Virginia Tech shooting.

In September 2020, UC Berkeley was fined $1.35 million by the Department of Education for violating the Clery Act, including "failure to issue emergency notifications" and "failure to issue timely warnings in accordance with federal regulations". On February 9, 2024, it became clear that UC Berkeley's WarnMe alert system has weaknesses that represent a serious problem and require robust changes and new policies.

Our project/toolkit intends to inform people about campus safety, the Clery Act, and possible ways to stay safe. It explains detailed information and anyone can use the roadmap as a guide with reduced risk for targeted harassment and violence.

Solutions

Our capstone study on UC Berkeley's emergency notification system, WarnMe, uncovered valuable insights for improving campus safety communications. Through analysis, we found that location details and scene descriptions in WarnMe messages often lack the clarity needed to be fully effective. Interviews and a diary study with students highlighted a gap between the perceived and actual security provided by these alerts, leading to unnecessary anxiety and confusion. Also, how users conceptualize the administrators and authors of WarnMe messages influences their engagement with the system and their sentiments towards it. Sentiment analysis further revealed varied emotional responses, and disclosed the need for sensitive communication. These findings demonstrate the necessity of refining the emergency communication strategies to enhance safety and trust within the campus community.

Deliverables

• A student toolkit to understand and evaluate the emergency mass notification alert system at UC Berkeley and/or at your university including a comprehensive guide on conducting UXR interviews and diary studies.
• A report detailing our foundational research findings, such as coding WarnMe, sentiment analysis, and detailed user-experience research, along with suggestions for future improvement and development of the toolkit.
• GitHub repositories of Sentiment Analysis and Inter-Annotator Agreement Calculation provide a detailed explanation of how the analyses were conducted. 

Thank You’s and Appreciations

Our research team would like to thank the community of people that supported our research. We are grateful for the opportunity to learn and grow together as a mini-capstone community. Our appreciation is extended to our project advisors, Dr. Niloufar Salehi + Dr. Alex Hanna, the entire School of Information staff and faculty, The Daily Californian staff, MIMS Class of 2024, as well as our personal support systems, including friends, family and loved ones.