By Olivia Winslow and Luis Perez
Newsday
LONG ISLAND, N.Y. — A report that a man on campus had displayed a gun created confusion and fear at Stony Brook University yesterday afternoon and prompted officials to send out emergency campus alerts before issuing an all-clear two hours later after a police search.
The man was not found.
The event heightened anxiety among students who recalled recent incidents of campus violence and wondered why the 1,100-acre campus was not locked down and closed off to outsiders.
“You cannot, on an open campus, have a lockdown,” Stony Brook president Shirley Strum Kenny said at a news conference. “What we have is an alert system letting people know immediately that there may be danger on campus.”
Kenny said text messages went out to about 11,000 people on campus who signed up for the university’s free emergency alert system. The university has about 23,000 students.
University police got a call at 1:30 p.m., assistant chief Douglas Little said, from a worker in the Student Activities Center cafeteria who had “approached an individual that he felt might have been trying to take property from the cafeteria.
When he approached that individual, he showed what appeared [to the worker] to be a weapon” in his waistband.
“We’re not sure, obviously, that it was a gun,” Kenny said.
The first text message was sent about 1:58 p.m., said university spokeswoman Lauren Sheprow, alerting recipients to “a report of an armed perpetrator on the academic mall.”
Little said university police, Suffolk County officers and K-9 units, and State Police searched, but found no one.
Students reported confusion, some being told to stay inside buildings and others not, said Adam Peck, 20, a reporter for the student newspaper. Little said campus police and faculty have discretion in giving instructions to students.
“I feel like this is escalating,” said Liz Cooper, 21, a videographer for SBU TV, noting that two female students reported being accosted on campus in the fall. This month students at a card game said they were attacked by two masked men in an attempted burglary. “Now, we have a gunman on campus,” Cooper said.
Journalism professor Charles Haddad said he was teaching in the basement of the library when a student burst in, “saying there’s a gunman on campus.”
Haddad said some students were “clustered looking at cell phones and calling friends. ... Anxious, but not panicked.”
Alluding to killings at Virginia Tech last year and at Northern Illinois University this month, Kenny said the “safety of everyone on campus is my very top priority.”
But the real-time alerts, she said, might have stoked insecurity.
“There may be occasion, and today may have been one, where we create a greater sense of urgency than existed.”
But, she added, “Safety has to come first.”
Timeline
1:33 p.m. University police receive a report of a gunman on campus.
1:37 p.m. University police respond to scene.
1:58 p.m. Approximate time first text message sent to students, faculty and staff, informing them of the situation. (Messages are distributed on a rolling basis. E-mails and voice mail on cell phones are distributed as well.)
2:51 p.m. Stony Brook updates its Web site with details about the incident.
3:55 p.m. Web site is updated giving the all-clear after police determine there is no longer an immediate threat.
6:35 p.m. Web site is updated saying the investigation is ongoing and promising to keep the community informed.
Copyright 2008 Newsday