As the 2019-2020 school year concluded under very unusual circumstances, the University of Illinois Police Department’s Office of Campus Emergency Planning was hard at work to facilitate a coordinated campus effort to keep our community members safe.
COVID-19 is an unprecedented challenge, but it was very much anticipated. UIPD’s emergency planners work throughout the year to detect and prepare for campus emergencies. Our long-standing plans to address infectious disease were put into action, and we started early to facilitate campus discussions about the best approaches to keep our community safe. It is very likely that many people were kept healthy because of this early action.
This was and continues to be a challenge on a scale beyond anything we have seen in our collective memory. Our unfortunate reality is that emergencies like COVID-19 and others will continue to pose a threat to communities everywhere – the best we can do is prepare, and our emergency planners are continuously hard at work making those preparations to protect our students, faculty, staff and visitors.
The University of Illinois Police Department continues to offer informational resources for both students and their families. Anyone can sign up for Illini-Alert emergency text messages by texting “IlliniAlert” to 226787. Illini-Alerts provide critical information and instructions during emergencies that present an imminent threat to the health or safety of campus community members.
Additionally, anyone can sign up to receive Campus Safety Notice emails, or notifications when UIPD posts updates to its news feed about campus safety issues. We also encourage everyone to follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for timely updates. Information about how to sign up for these resources and others is available at http://police.illinois.edu/informed.