A series of hoax calls about active shooters on college campuses across the U.S. is causing a wave of fear among students as the school year starts.
The calls have led universities to send out campus-wide alerts to “run, hide, fight,” prompting students and teachers to flee for cover as law enforcement officers swarmed campuses in search of the threat.
Yet in every recent case, the threat turned out to be nonexistent.
These hoax calls and false alarms — known as swatting — have affected at least 10 college campuses, ranging from Arkansas to Pennsylvania.
On Monday alone, law enforcement responded to reports of active shooters at Arkansas, Northern Arizona University, Iowa State, Kansas State, Colorado University, and the University of New Hampshire.
Another call was made Tuesday at the University of Kentucky, though it was determined to be a hoax before an alert could be issued.
The wave of reports started last Thursday when law enforcement in Pennsylvania received multiple calls about shots allegedly fired on Villanova’s campus by a man armed with an AR-15-style weapon. Sounds of gunfire could be heard in the background of the calls.
The calls — which also included a false report of someone being injured by gunfire — caused students attending orientation mass to rush into buildings and prompted the school to go into a temporary lockdown. Chairs were scattered on the school’s lawn, and some students hid in a utility closet.
Two hours later, the lockdown was lifted, and the school’s president condemned the “cruel hoax.”
“Today, as we are celebrating Orientation Mass to welcome our newest Villanovans and their families to our community, panic and terror ensued,” said Rev. Peter Donohue in a statement.
A Villanova senior, Ava Petrosky, was singing at an orientation Mass at the Catholic university when she saw people in the crowd start to run.
“Honestly, at that moment I thought, ‘I’m gonna die,’” she told CNN affiliate WPVI. She joined the crowd and ran to take cover.
The hoax was a “really tough way to start freshman year at college,” said Courtenay Harris Bond, who was on Villanova’s campus with her freshman son Thursday when the active shooter alert was issued, according to WPVI.
On the same day, Tennessee authorities received calls reporting an active shooter armed with an AR-15-style rifle at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Four people were reported to have been shot, and dispatchers reported hearing multiple gunshots in the background of the calls.
“This incident was a criminal act, intended to be disruptive and cause chaos,” the school said in a statement.
The University of South Carolina also received two calls Sunday reporting an active shooter at the school’s library, with the sound of gunshots in the background.
Northern Arizona University stated that a caller reported a gunman Monday at Cline Library on its Flagstaff Mountain Campus, prompting a response from Flagstaff police, Coconino County sheriff’s deputies, and both state and federal agents.
“The report was determined to be a hoax, and at no time was there an active threat to the NAU community,” the university said in a statement. “An investigation is underway into the false report, with assistance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
An FBI spokesperson said: “The FBI continues to work with state and local partners to investigate the swatting hoaxes, but cannot say at this stage whether or not the incidents are connected.”
These hoaxes risk creating complacency at campuses and among students, where active shooter alerts and drills have become a common part of life.
Miceala Morano, a 21-year-old senior journalism major at the University of Arkansas, experienced this firsthand. She hid behind a green screen in the broadcast room and called her grandmother as officers outside wore bulletproof vests.
“As of right now, I’m safe. I love you,” said Morano, who was raised participating in active shooter drills.
As a child, she learned to stack chairs in front of the classroom door and to climb into the ceiling if there was no other escape. Now, this.
“There’s just these few minutes where all you really feel is fear, whether the threat’s there or not,” she said.
Casey Mann, a 19-year-old classmate, said she couldn’t sleep until 2 a.m. afterward.
“It’s just a scary reality the time we’re living in right now,” she said, pausing and apologizing, her voice choking up. “It just makes me wonder what we’re supposed to expect in the future when it comes to the frequency of events like this.”
“It does make me worry that people will be inclined to think it’s a false alarm,” said Mya Norman, a chemistry instructor at Arkansas who hid under her office desk as the Fayetteville campus remained on lockdown.
The goal of swatting, which sometimes employs caller ID spoofing to disguise numbers, is to prompt authorities, particularly a SWAT team, to respond to a specific address.
Security experts said that risk remains, but campus officials must find the right balance in keeping students and teachers on guard for any real threats in the future.
“Law enforcement doesn’t have a choice,” Elizabeth Jaffe, an associate professor at Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School, told CNN, noting every second counts in a real mass shooting. “They have to investigate. They can’t just sit around and wait.”
A wave of threats three years ago was believed to originate from outside the country, the FBI said at the time. The agency provided few details about the recent campus threats, including whether they are coordinated, but the calls seem to share similar characteristics. Most involved multiple calls to authorities about an active shooter or shooting, and at least four included the sound of gunshots in the background.
The current spate of false calls comes as the threat of widespread gun violence feels particularly severe.
Less than a month ago, a gunman targeted the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta, leading to a lockdown at nearby Emory University.
Another gunman, targeting the NFL’s New York headquarters, opened fire inside a Manhattan skyscraper in late July, killing four people, including an off-duty police officer.
With reporting from the Associated Press
