After Lab families received an emergency alert that turned out to be false on Sept. 13, the Laboratory Schools safety and security team is working to prevent future accidental alerts.
The lockout alert, sent at 6:41 a.m. in the form of text messages and phone calls, stated that an external threat was being monitored, meaning that people should not come to campus and that University of Chicago police had been alerted. Moments later, the next notification was a false activation alert, and an “all clear” was issued.
Since the installation of the new public address and communications system in the summer of 2023, this has been the third false activation of the system as well as claims that these false activations would be fixed.
About five hours after the false alert, Director of Safety and Security Michael McGehee sent an email to parents explaining and addressing the incident. Mr. McGehee confirmed the activation was false and that the emergency communications console was accidently activated during early morning cleaning.
Mr. McGehee said his team will prevent future accidental alerts by creating a barrier for opportunities of accidental activation.
“One of the major steps we are taking immediately, that should be implemented Thursday or at the latest Friday, is, we are putting all of these systems in kind of a box,” Mr. McGehee said, “so that you would have to intentionally open this box, that will say ‘security use only’ to touch the device.”
Junior Grishma Unadkat said her mother mentioned the alert to her when she woke up Friday morning. Grishma said that she has become almost accustomed to these false alerts.
“I feel less likely to believe that an alert is true, given that many have been false,” Grishma said.
Lab parent Tarlan Hedayati said that she understands these mistakes can occur, and she is glad to know the system works.
“Honestly, the false activations don’t bother me that much,” Ms. Hedayati said. “I’m happy to know the system works. There’s bound to be mistakes made and hopefully they learn from them so it doesn’t happen as often. But I would rather they activate incorrectly and have a low threshold to do so, rather than ignoring a warning or a possible threat.”
