smamm,
Please see this thread, it may help: http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/ITRC-HP-Systems-Insight-Manager/change-the-severity-of-an-event-in-HP-SIM-7-4/td-p/6680762#.VK6c63tlyYs
As a workaround for storage/"status change" events, you may want to set up a specific condition or collection to send you all non-informational events for these. Basically, without reading the thread I linked, these are special events where you cannot change the underlying severity. For example, a predictive failure may always be a warning, however it is the same event ID # used for a failure condition, which would be critical (event 3046). There are a few of these types.. another would be the status for RAID cache batteries.
A further example:
HDD failure = failure code 7, event ID 3046 - Status change for a physical drive (critical)
HDD PFA = failure code 9, event ID 3046 - Status change for a physical drive (warning)
HDD online = failure code 0, event ID 3046 - Status change for a physical drive (informational)
These are not the correct failure codes, but you get the idea here.. it's all the same event number. I am not an SNMP/MIB expert so I can't fully explain this behavior, I just know you cannot change the code behavior in SIM.
Hope this helps!