PITTSFORD, New York — St. John Fisher University closed its doors last week after artificial intelligence (AI) software in the school’s video surveillance system confused prop weapons used during a rehearsal for a theater production with real firearms.
The technology triggered an emergency alert at 5:54 p.m. Tuesday, prompting a response from the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office and campus security at the Kearney Hall auditorium, the Democrat & Chronicle reports. Authorities searched the Kearney Hall Cleary Family Auditorium where they located the two prop weapons. A blockade was initiated, but was lifted around 6:09 p.m. after it was determined that the weapons were not real.
A statement issued by St. John Fisher President Gerard Rooney about the incident included a summary of how the school’s emergency notifications and communications work.
“The University uses the RAVE alert system to notify members of the university community with urgent messages or updates,” the statement read. “As part of the FCC’s new requirements regarding emergency messages and non-emergency messages, the University is now required to include the terms urgent, emergency and critical in our alert messages.”
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Examples of potential scenarios that would require a RAVE Alert using those terms, the statement continues, include:
- Urgent: water pipe break, accident that could block traffic on campus, power outage
- Emergency: closure due to bad weather, small fire on campus
- Critical: Immediate threat on campus, building or campus-wide closure or shelter-in-place
“This was not an active shooter situation,” Rooney said. “If that were the case, the RAVE Alert would have indicated so.”
