In this day and age, everyone has some type of mass notification system in place or certainly should. The major issue is whether you have a system, but the process behind the actual mechanical equipment that makes the announcement. Issues campuses must prepare for in a school violence or major crisis situation include: (1) Alert/warn the community; (2) Control borders/perimeters; (3) Stabilize/gain control over the situation; and (4) Facilitate/prepare for the influx of help. People can debate all day about the priority or sequence of events in the first minutes after the event, but warning/alerting the community is by far one of the highest priorities and the one the media and others will focus on the most. They focus on it because it is critical for everyone else in the community but most of all because it is one of the few quantifiable issues in a school's response. The author strongly recommends that everyone very closely scrutinize "The Process" involved in receiving and processing the initial information about the incident, who has the authority to make the alert, and how they do it. The best way to do this is by working it through in detailed exercises with all involved in the process and then adding a written flow chart following the process to help clarify it for the future.