A review of last week’s accidental emergency notification, which incited panic across the Michigan State University community, has yet to be completed. But the MSU Department of Police and Public Safety (DPPS) is pretty sure what went wrong.

According to department officials, the human error which resulted in students, staff, faculty and parents receiving the notification involved a Security and Operations Center employee who, during a routine test, accidentally clicked the wrong button.

The blunder resulted in thousands receiving an emergency notification warning of an “active violence incident” just days before the third anniversary of the Feb. 13, 2023, campus shooting. Confusion and anger was exacerbated due to some alert recipients having the word “drill” omitted from their notification.

Many also received contradictory signals during the incident. MSU sent out a correction message stating the alert was sent in “error,” but there were some who received phone call and email alerts even after the correction was dispatched.

On Thursday, The State News spoke with multiple DPPS officials to learn how exactly the situation unfolded, and better understand the process behind MSU’s emergency notifications.

MSU’s emergency notification system operates through Everbridge, a mass notification software that is used internationally. DPPS Chief of Police Mike Yankowski explained that the software contains three different “modes” for delivering an alert.

The first, Yankowski said, is the “live messaging” mode which is used to alert the public of an active threat, as well as during semesterly tests of the system. Last week's incident involved the two other modes present in the software: “Exercise mode,” which is reserved for drills, and a testing mode.

DPPS emergency manager Natisha Foster said that when a notification is sent out via the testing mode, that message is only delivered to a select group of people. This is not the case with the software’s exercise option, which relays messages to its entire list of contacts.

During an internal test of the emergency notification software, which the department conducts once a month, an employee at the security center had both the drill and testing modes open on two separate screens, Yankowski said. 

That employee, he said, “accidentally hit the send button in the exercise mode instead of the test mode.”