Recent events at one of New York City's "safest" campuses, Pace University, has forced students to speak out. On September 14th, Pace students were interrupted in their morning routines, not by a fire alarm, not by a disruptive student, but by an alert of an active shooter on campus. Information from student to student spread like wildfire, no concrete truths- only rumors and accusations, which served as students' only form of communication.

The events that followed the uproar were unorganized, chaotic, and frankly, terrifying. Various accounts of students have shed the fearful truth upon the situation.

Megann Martinez, Class of 2021

My name is Megann Martinez and I am a freshman at Pace University. The morning of September 14th was a normal Thursday. My day proceeded as usual as I walked to my Women and Gender's Studies class in One Pace Plaza on the 6th floor. About halfway into the lecture, a student raised her hand persistently. Once called on, she announced to the class that there was an active shooter somewhere in Pace University. Shock, panic, fear, anxiety, you name it, we felt it. At first, the rumors said the shooter was at 41 Park Row, a school office building a block from our location. Then Twitter said he was in our building. Then FaceBook said he was on our floor. Then GroupMe said someone was shot. Then... we heard screams outside the door. We were petrified with fear.

Our Professor made no obligation to take charge, as I later found out the University spent no time preparing or training her for such an event. Finally, a student stood up and directed the class. He led us in barricading the door, shutting off the lights, and huddling in a corner. Sounds of sobbing and whispered words were the only things to be heard. The sight of darkness and the fear of the future were the only things to be seen. I contacted my friends and family, not knowing if the next time I faced them I would be changed, or if I would not be there at all. All of a sudden, we heard banging on our door, we all screamed. I sheltered myself behind a podium and covered my mouth to mask my heavy breathing. The sound of falling chairs followed, and a girl from our class stumbled over our make-shift barricade. For a moment, we all seriously feared for our lives and this fellow classmate was stranded in the hallway, with much to fear as well.

After recovering from the shock, she told us that everyone in the building was evacuating. What were we supposed to do? We were all still in shock from the rumors, and no one knew the true story. Was he on our floor? Did he really have a machine gun? How could we just get up and leave with no one to guide us on what was even happening? Before I could finish any of these thoughts, my class got up and started to leave. Following the pack, I ran across the hallway and sprinted down a stairwell. I could hardly look around and get my bearings, but before I knew it I was outside. Cops and ambulances surrounded the building that I called "school". SWAT teams with terrifying guns paraded around the streets and I just lost it. It suddenly became real to me that something could have happened, I could have died. A huddle of people stood by, and I hurriedly joined the masses, crying and again, unaware of where I should go.

More rumors were heard, my phone blared with concerned calls, and a text saying that all of this was a false alarm. This is just one of the many stories of the false shooting. Many students were greatly affected, while some had no involvement at all. However, I hope we can all come to the same conclusions. The communication and plan of action were nowhere to be seen. Circumstantial or not, the University in no way effectively handled the situation. My professor had no idea what to do, there were no officials informing the public of what had happened, and every piece of information I received was off of social media. That terrifies me, especially when this occurred in the building that I continue to be living in and call "home". I fear that if there had been an actual shooter at Pace University, I would be dead.

Olivia Hanewald, Class of 2021

I figure most people who are living don’t experience the feeling of possible death. I figure that the thought of death does swim through our thoughts every now and then, only long enough until we choose to push it away. I figure a lot of things about life in general, to be honest, and a couple days ago, I figured I might not be able to make it through the day. My name is Olivia Hanewald, and this is my personal experience with the false alarm Pace shooting.

You can only see rooftop from my window. There are buildings that spread wide, tall, with bricks, and with concrete, but you never see an inch of the floor. The gaps between them plummet vertically, a blurred image of hyper speed granite until, finally, you reach the ending of another rooftop.

I’ve thought about death before. Not in a fun way or a bad way, technically, but we all know the feeling. You question yourself and how it’ll happen, the deep cynicism rushes in the portion after when you question your own religion. After that, it’s just imagining the black nothingness of possibly being well, nothing, and then the thought becomes too much to handle and you push it away. Thought session has been canceled.

In my quite small dorm room in Maria’s Tower, all was technically well. Well, all was normal. The cars purred outside, an occasional police siren blared and a hospital alarm screeched. Nothing was unusual; nothing was questionable. Writing my new article, Ten Moments of Harry Potter No One Will Forget, I didn’t realize that my idea would be scrapped, trash, incongruent, after those next ten seconds.

Sirens blared like usual. Not usual. Sirens blared louder than usual. Only after the curdling scream I heard through the hallway did I realize the short distance between me and the police siren.

I in the fastest way possible made my way to the door, and straight to the window of the lounge, glancing over the plummeting edge of the building. Down below, a congregation of panicked students burst from the building, babbling and screaming and some of them even crying. Police followed in after, long guns and weapons I couldn’t quite name rested tightly in their arms; different weapons from the tiny pistols I was used to seeing in their utility belts.

There were no alarms, no announcements, no nothing. Just the creepy silence of the building remained, and the horror soaked soundwaves from the outside leaked through the walls and into my consciousness.

The hallway soon filled with other students from my floor, the sudden silence not being so sudden any longer. They shouted and panicked and pondered the reasons for the vibrant activity, and I stood in awe, and did the only thing I knew could possibly explain the events; check the internet.

ALLEGED SHOOTER AT PACE UNIVERSITY stood out well to me, on the top of the news list of New York City. That, that wasn’t something I believed to be true despite the fact that it sat right in front of me. It’s probably a dud. Or an old story. It’s probably a false article; one of those that gets people talking. It’s probably nothing. The date at the bottom of the article listed September 14^th; the present day. Fuck.

School shootings are more common than they were a decade ago. No one really knows exactly why. No one knows how to truly regulate it, and no one really knows how to challenge that ideal. It’s happened all over the country in countless establishments, and yet, I never thought it would happen to me.

At this point, most of the people from my floor were arguing on what to do. Do we leave? No, we can’t, the shooter is on the sixth floor, and we're on the seventh. But we’re on the seventh floor in Marias, not in the school; they’re in the school. So let’s leave, then. But-

Ongoing effort from everyone on the floor was initiated; figure out what to do. We called building security, and no response was given. Not one number in the entire building was answered, and the effort began to feel useless. To all of us, we felt like the abandoned soldiers lost in an unknown battle with no compass in hand. Everything was one big pile of confusion; no news, no communication, no anything. Finally, we decided to call the police. The operator seemed confused, nonetheless, we did what we were told, and stayed on the floor locked in a room, with our mouths shut and our bodies still.

This process of staying quiet wasn’t exactly what it should have been. We kept whispering to each other, trying to figure out exactly what we should do, and how the person on the phone didn’t seem to really comprehend what was going on. The shooter was technically in the school building, not in the dorm that was connected, so… was it right to stay?

“Attention,” the loudspeakers boomed after a long span of minutes. Finally, the first announcement. “Attention. There is nothing going on. There is nothing going on.” A very descriptive announcement. A very informative announcement. Needless to say, the students surrounding me, as well as myself, were even more concerned than they were before.

“It sounded like a hoax,” someone blared, “It sounded like it was staged.” We had no idea how to feel about the announcement. There was no real information coming from the inside itself; the only updates we were obtaining were from tweets and texts of the people on the outside. Mostly rumors and theories.

I wondered whether I should call my parents. It was a funny thought, having to call your parents and family in the time of a crisis. My heart longed for it at that moment, as did others’, but it just didn’t seem like the right thing to do. Calling would be confirming it, and I couldn’t confirm this. More specifically, I didn’t want to confirm this. So, as we sat in silence, I kept hoping that somewhere in New Jersey, my family had absolutely no desire to turn on the news.

Minutes after, two RA’s ended up knocking on the door to tell us that everything was a hoax, or at least it was going around that it was a hoax. This was a wakeup call for some, and at this point, a complete waste of information to others. From staying so long in a building with so many mixed up messages, we had no idea what to believe at this point. The building just didn’t feel safe. Therefore, even with our cloudy judgment on the situation, we gathered each other, headed down the stairs, and got out of the building as fast as possible.

We spent a long while in the park next to the city council building, trying to calm. It took a while for my heart to relax; each time it pumped I felt it in my throat and I wanted to throw up. The news had been confirmed; the alleged shooter had been the result of a panicked call after a student was spotted with a fake bullet covered decorative belt in the bathroom at school. The thought might have sounded silly to some, but it made sense to be startled. Not many people try to replicate Rambo style within school buildings. I certainly hope no one feels inspired by the fashion statement after this- since it almost caused half of us to fall over from crippling anxiety.

Overall, the experience was most definitely the scariest event of my entire life; Megann- and almost all of the current students at Pace University- would say the same. Whether it was fake or not, the spread of information was so fast, and so untrustworthy. The lack of information was more than unnerving, it was daunting. I don’t think I had ever imagined my own death in my head as many times as I did in that small span of time. But, life goes on, thankfully.

Ultimately, we as a group of people, as citizens of this world, have no idea what a day will bring when we awaken. After the fake Pace shooting, it is safe to say that many of us, if not all of us, have learned that in a world as spontaneous and terrifying as it is today, we need to know how to act in the threat of life. Everything is ephemeral, everything is so easily bombarded and diminished on this planet; a sad but extremely true statement. And certainly, we now know that it is not enough to put your life in the hands of others. If this event had truly been real, if it had not been a false alarm, I cannot imagine how many of us would be dead. I cannot fathom the accidents and the blood that would lay on the ground of this institution. I cannot come to accept the number of students who would have perished because of the lack of communication.

As these two accounts relay, the false alarm on September 14th was anything but foul play. Real students were affected, and they all say the same thing. Pace needs a wake-up call. Students, faculty, and administration alike need to join together and defend the right of safety with proper communication and plans to avoid this chaos in the future.

Co-written by Megann Martinez and Liv Hanewald; Pace University Class of 2021.