University of Missouri students bothered school did not send MU Alert homecoming night
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
Students at the University of Missouri are questioning the school's decision not to put out an MU Alert for a Sunday morning shooting one block away from campus.
The university says the MU Alert system is meant to send text message alerts to the campus community when a significant emergency or dangerous situation poses an immediate threat to the health and safety of students, faculty and staff on campus or nearby property.
Two people were shot near Ninth St. and Locust St. just hours after Mizzou's homecoming football game.
The corner of Ninth St. and Locust St. is one block from the edge of campus, Ninth St. and University Ave.
But the campus community did not receive an MU Alert.
"I saw the ambulance, I heard everything go down but I didn't hear anything from the school regarding the safety or anything like that so I thought it was very odd," said Natalie St. John an MU Student.
So far this year, there have been four MU Alerts. Two of the four were for severe weather. The other two were a shooting and a robbery.
According to the MU Alert website, "MU leaders are very judicious when choosing to alert the campus community. Numerous studies have shown that over-notification causes people to begin to ignore warning messages."
"When reviewing the situation this weekend, MUPD quickly determined that there was no immediate and ongoing threat to the campus community," said Sara Diedrich a university spokesperson.
We put a map together of the last four MU Alerts involving police dating back to 2020. Plus, we included the homecoming post-game shooting for context.
You can see the post-game shooting is in the same vicinity as some of the other calls.
"They should prioritize their students, safety, regardless of how far," said Jacob Crouch an MU student.
The MU Alert twitter account has been silent since June.