Letter to the Editor

BruinAlert makes privacy a priority

In his column “UCLA Athletics shouldn’t advertise by phone,” Jan. 9, Ross Aikins implied that there may be a connection between BruinAlert, UCLA’s new emergency notification system and a recent UCLA Athletics’ automated voice mail broadcast marketing the sale of UCLA Football season tickets.

I want to clarify that BruinAlert was not used in any way to send out the UCLA Athletics announcement. Any information collected by BruinAlert is treated strictly as confidential by the very limited group of BruinAlert administrators and is not shared with any person, department or entity on or off campus.

I want to assure participants that any breach of confidentiality by the BruinAlert administrators would be considered grounds for dismissal. The information collected and stored by BruinAlert is not used for any purpose other than for notifying people of an emergency or crisis situation that disrupts the normal operation of the UCLA campus, or threatens the health or safety of members of the campus community.

BruinAlert was introduced to students in November 2007 by Chancellor Block as the primary means of alerting UCLA students to an emergency on the campus. This system provides students with instructions or critical actions to take in case of such an emergency. We continue to encourage students to sign up for BruinAlert at

BruinAlert.ucla.edu to receive Short Message Service (SMS) priority text messages from BruinAlert as one part of their personal emergency preparedness plan.

Jack Powazek

Associate vice chancellor, UCLA General Services