PITTSFORD, N.Y. — St. John Fisher University went into lockdown last week after artificial intelligence (AI) software from the school’s video surveillance system mistook prop guns being used during a theater production rehearsal as real firearms.
The technology triggered an emergency alert at 5:54 p.m. Tuesday, eliciting a response from the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office and campus security to the Kearney Hall auditorium, Democrat & Chronicle reports. Authorities searched the Kearney Hall Cleary Family Auditorium where they located the two prop guns. A lockdown was initiated but was lifted around 6:09 p.m. after it was determined the guns weren’t real.
A statement issued by St. John Fisher President Gerard Rooney regarding the incident included an outline of how the school’s emergency notification and communications work.
“The University utilizes the RAVE Alert System to notify members of the campus community with urgent messages or updates,” the statement reads. “As part of new FCC requirements relating to emergency messages and non-emergency messages, the University is now required to include the terms urgent, emergency, and critical in our alert messages.”
Examples of potential scenarios that would necessitate a RAVE Alert using those terms, the statement continues, include:
- Urgent: water main break, accident potentially blocking through traffic on campus, power outage
- Emergency: weather closure, small fire on campus
- Critical: immediate threat on campus, building or campus-wide lockdown or shelter-in-place
“This was not an active shooter situation,” said Rooney. “Had it been, the RAVE Alert would have indicated so.”
