8:32 p.m. is when the first email went out calling students to “Run, hide, fight.”
8:32 p.m. is when fear first entered students minds when they realized that their campus would never the same.
Four hours in lockdown: How students felt during shelter-in-place order
FBI agents and police officers inside Campbell Hall, the building across from the MSU Union where a mass shooting took place on the night of Feb. 13, 2023. Not. The officers were still searching for the attacker hours later, making their way in and out of Campbell Hall, giving sporadic direction to the students that were sheltered inside.
Math for secondary education freshman Emily Donovan was sitting in her dorm in East Akers with some of her friends.
“I left my dorm getting ready to go to the side door and then I hear, like, yells from my room, screaming my name and I look at my phone," Donovan said. "The R.A., Texas, said, 'everyone, please, like shelter down in your room, like lock your doors.'”
This feeling of fear became universal around campus.
Journalism junior Marin Klein was filming a broadcast in the Communication Arts and Sciences building when she first heard the news.
“(My friend) kept calling and I just texted and said 'Hey, what's up? We're in the middle of filming," Klein said. "She just said, 'Wherever you are, get inside. There were gunshots in the Union.'”
Klein was stuck in building along with many other students and didn’t have any way to even lock the doors.
“It's just wild to me to think that I could be so scared in the building that I spent my entire academic life and I'm in it every single day," Klein said. "And now the thought of going back there terrifies me. Just to think of the fear I felt while I was sitting in the corner of that room in the dark for four hours.”
She said her class was tuned into the police scanner.
“I felt like it wasn't real," Klein said.
Pre-nursing freshman Abby Craven was doing laundry when she got messages informing her of the shooter. She said she barricaded herself in her dorm with the dresser, turned off the lights and hid in a closet for the next few hours.
"You never really knew what was going on," Craven said.
Students were tuning into the news and police scanners to try to get a grasp on what was happening around them, but with all the panic and false alarms, it was challenging.
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“It really did affect everyone on campus, even if you're off-campus, because we didn't know what was happening,” Donovan said.
For most people the lockdown ended around 12:30 a.m., but the feelings of the event are still with them.
“I feel numb one moment and the next day I'm crying,” Donovan said.
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