I was in Berkey Hall on the third floor when the pops, crackles and booms were heard. I was sitting in my desk during lecture as the floor started shuddering. And I was in shock as the room became completely silent as my professor and classmates sat and looked nervously at each other. We were wondering what to do as a girl went running down the hall saying that a shooting had just occurred.

As we realized that students were flooding out of the building below us, we did what was most logical for us to do — barricade ourselves in our classroom since we had no clue what had happened downstairs. Students piled desks on each other in front of one door and a table in front of the other. Two boys kept their hands on the knobs to keep the doors, which opened out toward the hallway, shut just in case it really was a shooting, not just the ridiculous and classless prank that it was. For about 10 minutes, we sat nervously against the walls of the room, hoping that it really was just the sound of firecrackers, not the sound of gunfire until the police came upstairs.