“In the Bessey situation, some professors were awesome," Roudebush said. "They turned the lights off and locked the doors. Other professors just kept teaching."

Now, MSU police has an hour long presentation to train professors at MSU about how to deal with a gunman scenario.

“We give the training to all professors, and then we repeat it for new staff and faculty and TAs and grad staff,” Roudebush said.

Included in the training is what to do if there is no lock on the door, like the some classrooms in Bessey Hall.

“Making sure university buildings have locks on their doors is outside of (MSU police's) ability to change,” Roudebush said. “But even if there are no locks on the doors, you can pile furniture in front of the door.”

Anthropology senior Megan Caveney was sitting in her IAH class in Bessey Hall when people thought there was an active shooter in the building.

Caveney said one student got the MSU alert on his phone and told the professor about the threat.

The professor had her students stand against the wall between the two doors into the classroom.

“We couldn’t lock the doors because there was no lock on them,” Caveney said. “The professor held the door handle shut. It was scary because there wasn’t much she could do if a shooter came to our room.”

Roudebush said the police department is prepared for these threats. 

“We at MSU are prepared for a situation like this, our agency and surrounding agencies have trained excessively,” Roudebush said. “We have an alert system in place.”

However, Roudebush said most mass shooting incidents are over before law enforcement gets there.

“These situations only last for minutes,” Roudebush said. “It is incumbent on the people in the situation to do whatever they can to survive."

After being at MSU for four years, Caveney said she thinks the university has gotten much better at communicating with the students.

“Four years ago, MSU was a lot more hush hush about situations like this," Caveney said. "There was a shooting in Cedar Village and MSU tried really hard to keep it on the down low."

Caveney said now MSU is much more open about communication what is going on to the students.

“The biggest thing is just to make ‘what if?' scenarios,” Roudebush said. “Don’t be paranoid, be mindful.”