Elementary education freshman Lauren Ford was out to dinner with her friends when she received a “shots fired” alert email from Michigan State University Police Department.
“We had just gotten our food and I remember all of our phones started blowing up and so we checked them,” Ford said. “The girl right next to me started sobbing and my jaw just dropped, and I remember my mind was racing and I couldn’t process— I didn’t think it was real at first.”
Ford and her group of friends were off campus for the dinner. With limited information Ford said, “I wasn’t sure what to think about it, I didn’t think it was real.”
“We immediately called our parents, I called my mom because I know that she’s in the parent group chat on Facebook,” Ford said. “I figured that she would have more information than I did, so I called her, and immediately after that we started texting everyone we knew on campus to make sure that they were safe.”
Ford and her group did not return to campus that evening, instead they found shelter in Mason, staying at a friend’s house.
“We didn’t want to go back to campus, we didn’t think it was safe, we didn’t think we were mentally ok to go back to campus – so we just stayed at a friend's house,” Ford said.
Journalism freshman Ava Moschete and her roommate sheltered in place in their dorm room throughout the night after receiving multiple notifications from the university.
“We kind of just sat there for a little while and were checking social media when we got a text from our RA that said to barricade our door if we could,” Moschete said. “So we did that, we turned the lights off and we closed the blinds and sat on the floor.”
Like Ford and her friends, Moschete and her roommate turned to social media for additional information. The pair started listening to a police scanner.
“I had the police scanner up, and (my roommate) was going through social media trying to find information,” Moschete said. “Eventually, I turned on the news on my laptop, so we kinda had all three going on at once.”
Many students experienced, along with law enforcement, confusion throughout the night concerning the location of the shooter.
“It was nice to hear the voices of the police officers to know that they were doing something,” Moschete said, “but it was scary because there was a lot of fake news being spread around, so we didn’t really know what to believe.”
Moschete said she was, however, comforted in the attentive action of the MSU Police and Public Safety.
“There were a lot of officers all around campus, and we genuinely felt safe even though there was an active shooter–they made us feel safe and they were constantly updating us,” Moschete said.
After the threat to MSU’s campus was lifted, Moschete and her roommate stayed in their dorm room for the rest of the night, trying to sleep.
“We were just kind of laying there, it was kind of just a strange feeling because we were told everything was ok but it didn’t really feel like it,” Moschete said.
Ford and her group returned to campus early this morning, experiencing unease as they were about to re enter their building.
“I was driving down the road, right outside the door, and my stomach just sank–my heart dropped,” Ford said. “I just felt so sick. I remember I turned around to everybody and was like, ‘Do you guys feel so super sick right now?’ And everybody, all together, said ‘Yes.’”
