UW Alert Responds To Criticism Of Monday's Warnings

SEATTLE, WA — On Monday, UW Advisory and UW Alert sent out two messages to users. The first, warned users about a protest. The second, was for a burglary at the Safeway near University Village. Critics say together those two messages appeared to discourage residents from taking part in protest, and conflated the burglary as the fault of a nearby peaceful protest when it was not.

Wednesday the emergency alert system said they have heard those complaints, and they will be reassessing how they could've handled the situation better.

In a release, UW Alert say they issued the first warning about the protest as a "precaution about a protest that police had reason to believe was intended to incite violence", but acknowledge that may have not been the right move.

"In hindsight, it is clear that the initial note to avoid the area could be read as a directive to not attend a protest. That was not its intention but in retrospect, we should have been clearer and will aim to in the future," reads the response.

The second alert, poster around 4:30 p.m. claimed a large group had arrived in the University Village area, smashing windows and looting nearby.

Several replies to the alert called that account into question. In their response, UW Alert defends the choice to send the alert, saying that looting did happen at the Safeway, and they believe they made the right call in alerting everyone:

"As part of this incident, an individual who we learned later is a UW student was assaulted by multiple people trying to force their way into the store. All of this occurred within a span of about 15 minutes and the decision was made to send a UW Alert message to advise the UW community about a potentially dangerous situation, especially considering the location which has student housing around it in multiple directions."

Critics say the alert reads as a judgement call about the whole protest, the majority of which was peaceful, which UW Alert is acknowledging and apologizing for.

"We made the decision to send the message based on the information available at the time and did not intend to imply that the full group was involved in any such activity," reads their statement. "We understand that words matter, and we will take this feedback and consider it when making future decisions."