Late Sunday night, an individual campus officials have yet to identify, posted what was later determined to be a non-credible threat in a chat room.

“Tomorrow, at approximately 9:30 A.M. I will be shooting everyone at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas. I will then shoot myself. Look for me on the news. ‘Ricardo Ruiz,’ ” the initial posting read.

By 10 p.m., screenshots of the threat had gone viral on Twitter and Facebook, sparking conflicting responses from Midwestern’s public information office.

Director of Marketing and Public Information Julie Gaynor said she received a call from Chief of Campus Police Dan Williams, prompting her to respond to multiple Facebook posts, thanking everyone who tried to spread word of the threat.

“And then it seemed like it took a life of its own on Twitter,” Gaynor said. “So we started calling back and I was like, ‘this is out on Twitter, it’s time that we have to let our community know that we are aware of it,’ that we know the situation and we’re investigating it.”

KFDX reporter David Gonzalez said on Twitter, “Really hope @MidwesternState is monitoring their account. Giant outcry from current/former students on #communicationfail on shooter threat,” after many students verbalized concerns with the way university officials communicated to the public.

“It went like wildfire, which in one way is very good because at least it shows that people are concerned and they wanted to get the word out as quick as possible,” Williams said. “The negative side of that, on the social media side, by being able to go through social media that quick before law enforcement is able to really dig their heels in and get into and try to verify it or not. It sends a lot of panic through people as our phone calls have attested to that today. Just trying to keep up with them has been a full time job.”

Cory Bennett, sophomore in business, said on Twitter, “It worries me that @MidwesternState hasn’t sent out a campus wide email yet… Not everybody has social media.”

After hundreds of subsequent posting on various social media sites and a subsequent investigation, administrators and police quickly determined the threat was not credible and posted on Twitter that the campus was safe at 12:19 a.m. Monday.

“The MSU Police Department has concluded its investigation of tonight’s online threat. There is no imminent danger to campus,” the post read.

Still, that wasn’t the end of the story as administrators, students and faculty replay what happened and what they could have done different.

Investigation ongoing

The investigation is not over. The investigation is ongoing and according to University President Jesse Rogers, FBI and Department of Public Safety officials have made their resources available to the university police as they attempt to identify a suspect who they now believe to be someone from out-of-state.

“I’m satisfied that we followed our prescribed procedures,” Rogers said. “In fact, I’m really proud of the way our police handled it.”

Suspects

According to Williams, officers visited the student whose name was implicated in the threat after “an individual” notified campus police around 9:15 p.m.

“I’m 100 percent positive, in my mind, that he had nothing to do with it,” Williams said. “It’s one of those situations where you meet somebody in a chat room and for whatever reason somebody gets upset with somebody and then next thing you know because of all the information people put on various social media sites, this person does a little research and finds out who they are and targets them with this type of behavior, looking to get him in trouble with the police.”

Campus communication

Gaynor said she saw such comments on Twitter and Facebook, but said multiple emails were sent through the university postmaster.

“We did send out the emails. I went ahead and posted to Facebook first because I thought that was more pressing,” Gaynor said. “If I could just go ahead and post it under us I think that was better than sending an email out, plus my main concern is that that was the area that was more immediate because my email wasn’t getting a lot of return emails or responses, it was strictly in social media.”

Brittany Schumann, freshman in athletic training, said she was terrified and already decided not to attend class on Monday because of the lack of information from university officials.

“I feel like they should have done better on sending something out on the alert system,” Schumann said, but Gaynor and Williams both said the MSU Alert system was not used because there was no immediate threat to campus safety.

“The MSU Alert is not designed as a news source. It’s really for those things that are imminent, for those things that are immediate,” Gaynor said. “If we wanted someone to shelter in place or we had definite information or it has validity. At no time did they feel like that was the situation.”

Gaynor said the two tweets deleted by the Midwestern State University Twitter account were removed because of an inaccurate statement regarding involvement from the FBI in the investigation.

“I was not expecting them to be deleted and I don’t know why. Again, that will have to be another conversation that we have because we want to be transparent as possible in these things,” Gaynor said. “I think it was because we just wanted to be accurate. We wanted everyone to know what we knew, but whoever it was that took it down was thinking, ‘oh, this is inaccurate,’ so they took it down.”

Williams said the police did not issue an MSU Alert because he felt that there was enough information showing that there was not a substantiated threat.

“Had I felt during the night last night as we begun into this investigation that there was a likelihood of a true and substantiated threat, I can assure that I would have been the biggest advocate to put out a mass notification. I would rather err on the side of caution,” Williams said.

Williams said university officials will examine the situation to determine what could be done better in the future.

“We will look at this situation and reassess it and hopefully there won’t be a next time, but if there is, what we can do to improve upon any communication,” Williams said. “If you use it too much, when the real disaster comes, is it going to be effective or not? And those are the hard decisions as we’re seeing with this case.”

STAFF EDITORIAL: “#scared: Communication breakdown caused undue panic, hysteria”
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STUDENT COMMUNICATION

• Brittany Schumann [@b_schumann]: Soo…will I get in trouble for not going to class tomorrow? ‪#scared (11:02 p.m.)
• Michael Reynolds [@Michael_YoungD]: The library would be the safest place bc the doors weigh 9000 lbs (11:12 p.m.)
• Brittany Schumann [@b_schumann]: Not sure if I should risk failing my test or possibly getting shot.. (12:48 a.m.)
• Mason Ellis [@MasonEllis95]: I would feel a lot more comfortable if they would actually tell us what they found out and showed us why they think it’s “safe”. (12:23 a.m.)
• MSU Campus Watch [@MWSUCampusWatch]: University police say the threat is a hoax. The FBI was not involved, and the name linked to the online threat is a victim himself. (7:01 a.m.)
• Mason Ellis [@MasonEllis95]: I really wish we could get some straight answers instead of being lied to by our university. (9:20 a.m.)
• Cory Bennett [@CBigBennett]: It worries me that ‪@MidwesternState hasn’t sent out a campus wide email yet… Not everybody has social media. (11:41 p.m.)
• Midwestern State University [@MidwesternState]: MSU PIO: The MSU Police Department has concluded its investigation of tonight’s online threat. There is no imminent danger to the campus. (12:19 a.m. now shown as their first tweet on the topic)
• Skyler Warrick [@SKYentertainer]: You aren’t giving any details for students of MSU to feel safe returning to classes… don’t be surprised at the drop in attendance tomorrow (12:25 a.m.)

OTHER TEXAS SHOOTINGS

• March 30, 1960 | Alice | Donna Dvorak, 14, brought a .22 target pistol to Dubose Junior High School, and fatally shot Bobby Whitford, 15, in their 9th grade science class. Dvorak believed Whitford posed a threat to one of her girlfriends.
• Aug. 1, 1966 | Austin | Charles Whitman, aged 25, climbed atop the observation deck at the University of Texas-Austin, and killed 17 people and wounded 31 during a 96-minute shooting rampage in the University of Texas massacre.
• April 7, 1977 | Whitharral | High School Principal M. O. Tripp was shot to death on the front steps of the school by Ricardo Lopez, 17.
• April 26, 1978 | Dallas | Woodrow Porter, 38, who was a janitor at Paul Dunbar Elementary School, was shot to death by the 56-year-old grandmother of an 8-year-old that was allegedly spanked by Porter earlier.
• May 18, 1978 | Austin | John Daniel Christian, 13, son of Lyndon B. Johnson’s former press secretary George Christian, shot to death his English teacher, Wilbur Grayson, 29, with his father’s .22 caliber rifle in front of approximately 30 classmates. John Christian was arrested and charged but was not prosecuted. He spent two years in a mental hospital. He is now a practicing attorney in Austin.
• March 20, 1980 | Dallas | Rosie Pearson, 49, fifth grade teacher, was shot to death in the hallway of J. Leslie Patton School, by an unknown assailant
• Dec. 16, 1987 | Katy | Mayde Creek High School student Ramesh D. Tumalad, 15, shot himself to death in his Algebra class as his classmates looked on.
• Jan. 8, 1991 | Richardson | Jeremy Wade Delle, 16, killed himself with a .357 Magnum in front of his second-period English class. His teacher sent him out to get an admittance slip, but instead, returned with a gun. The incident inspired the 1992 Pearl Jam song “Jeremy”.
• May 14, 1993 | Irving | Nimitz High School shooting Max Martinez, 17, shot and killed Jose Balderas Jr., 17, in the back of the head for an insult the victim’s girlfriend said about the perpetrator’s girlfriend.
• Aug. 26, 1996 | San Antonio | 25-year-old Gregory Heath Tidwell stormed into the John Peace Library at the University of Texas at San Antonio on the first day of fall classes, shooting 54-year-old cataloging head Stephen Sorenson four times. Tidwell then turned the weapon upon himself and committed suicide.
• Sept. 28, 2010 | Austin | Colton Tooley, 19, a student at the University of Texas at Austin, fired multiple shots around the campus with an AK-47 semi-automatic rifle. Nobody was injured. After the shooting, Tooley walked into the Perry-Castañeda Library and then committed suicide
• March 31, 2011 | Houston | Multiple gunmen opened fire during a powder puff football game at Worthing High School. One man, an 18-year-old former student named Tremaine De Ante’ Paul, died. Five other people received injuries.
• Dec. 9, 2011 | Edinburg | Two students were shot after school at Harwell Middle School in Edinburg while trying out for their school’s basketball team. The shooting allegedly occurred from an adult off campus who was apparently shooting on a target range.
• Jan. 10, 2012 | Houston | One student was shot and injured after another student opened fire at North Forest High School. The student said that he was being confronted by three other students who were bullying him, and he took out a handgun and fired at them in self-defense. A 16-year-old bystander was unintentionally hit in the leg. The 18-year-old suspect was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
• Jan. 22, 2013 | Houston | Between the Library and Academic Building outside of Lone Star College–North Harris, two men got into an argument and one of the men pulled out a gun and shot the other man, a student, injuring him. A maintenance man suffered a gunshot wound to the leg. The gunman accidentally shot himself in the leg. After the shooting, the gunman fled into the woods and was arrested hours later. The charges against the initial suspect were dropped and another man was arrested.
• April 16, 2013 | Temple | A student shot himself in the head while at school, and died on the night of the incident.
• Oct. 15, 2013 | Austin | A 17-year-old student fatally shot himself with a handgun in the courtyard of Lanier High School. The shooting happened in front of other students.