UVU draws criticism for its communication while police searched for suspect on campus

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• UVU faced criticism for delayed communication during a campus threat on Wednesday.
• A woman threatened violence; police apprehended her more than two hours later near campus.
• UVU President Anderson acknowledged communication issues and promised improvements in future responses.

OREM — Some Utahns are expressing frustration with Utah Valley University for the way it communicated with students while someone was threatening violence on campus last week.

On Wednesday around 12:20 p.m., a woman reportedly threatened to shoot a small group of people near the Green Apartments on Campus Drive. UVU said in the email to students that UVU Police "responded immediately, closely monitored the situation" and worked with Orem police to track her movements on security footage.

The email said that around 1 p.m., a nearby Lakeridge Junior High School was put on a secure hold status. UVU was not. A woman believed to be the one who made the threats was apprehended about 2 1/2 hours after the threat was reported to police.

UVU students were emailed about the ongoing police search for a suspect on campus. Emily Buckley, parent of two UVU students, contacted administrators to express her frustration with its communication method. She said her daughter was at work when the email was sent and did not know what was happening until the people around her started chatting about the ongoing threat on campus.

When she stepped outside her workplace to call her mother in a panic, she witnessed police apprehending the suspect.

"She was extremely upset that she had to find this out hours later and then witness this girl being arrested," Buckley recounted. "She said she's never felt so unsafe."

Buckley's son was also on campus that day. He did not see the email until he got home. He then realized he had been on the same part of campus as the suspect.

"Why would you send an email if kids were in danger?" Buckley questioned. "Nobody reads their email when they're in class. That's the worst way to get ahold of anybody."

Buckley was even more alarmed by UVU's lack of urgent communication because this happened less than a year after Charlie Kirk was murdered on campus. She said she wished the administrators would have sent out text alerts and taken extra care to consider that these are the same students traumatized by the shooting, the chaos on campus and the manhunt that followed.

"It was like reliving the Charlie Kirk thing all over again," she said.

UVU's new president Jon Anderson emailed students after the incident, detailing the timeline of events and explaining what happened. While he said the situation ended safely, Anderson, who just assumed the presidency in August, acknowledged the community's frustration.

"We also recognize that members of our community were frustrated by the timing and nature of communications during the incident," he wrote in the email. "That feedback is important, and we take it seriously. Safety is not only about responding effectively as situations arise. It is also about ensuring our community receives clear, timely, and accurate information."

Anderson went on to acknowledge that there are still areas where the university needs to improve.

"We are continuing to review our communication processes and emergency response practices to identify opportunities for improvement. Accountability requires that we learn from every situation and strengthen our efforts moving forward," Anderson said.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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Heather Peterson

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Heather Peterson is a reporter for KSL NewsRadio and producer of Utah's Noon News.