My College Had An Active Shooter Situation, And It Was Terrifying

November 29, 11:00ish PM

I was getting ready to go to bed. I'd been up doing homework, which was no surprise considering finals week is looming way too close for comfort. I'd thought about going to the library, but I knew if I walked all the way there I wasn't going to have the motivation to go back to my dorm. One of my roommates had gotten out of cheer practice pretty recently, and she was in the dining hall with some friends. I was on my phone, just checking Snapchat and other stuff before I turned it off for the night. I was getting ready to be done for the night when I got a notification from our floor's GroupMe, asking what was happening over by the library. Someone had heard there was something involving gunshots going down either by there or the rec center.

11:15 PM

The floor group chat explodes, and everyone's Snapchat stories are full of people telling others to take shelter and calling each other to make sure they were okay. I texted all of my friends and made sure they were safe, and then called my mom to tell her what was going on. She was understandably freaked out, but she felt better after I told her I was safe and told me to let her know if anything else happened.

11:33 PM

We finally get a text from campus police, saying there was a police emergency involving a gun near the rec center. By this point pretty much everyone has known for a bit now what's going on, and we're all a bit frustrated that it took so long to get an alert out when we'd known for at least a good 15-20 minutes beforehand. We go on Facebook and let loved ones know that we're safe, we're out of harm's way, no we don't know what's going on other than we've been told to shelter in place.

November 30, 12:33 AM

We receive another text alert that the shelter in place has been lifted and there is no longer an active threat on campus. I text my mom again and let her know that campus PD has said we were safe and that I'm going to bed.

We saw some of the drama unfold from our window, and could see the police cruiser lights flashing as we frantically called our friends to make sure they were okay, and then our families to let them know in return we were safe. Things went pretty much back to normal during the day after, but it was still scary to think about what could have happened if this was more than a fight gone too violent. My roommate and I had immediately thought after we heard there were shots that this could be the next shooting that would end up as a tragedy, and lives lost. Thankfully, it wasn't, but the fact that this was the first thought that came to mind when this happened is terrifying, that this has just become the norm to expect when we hear something about shots being fired.