Anonymous threat causes some students concern from MWSU Campus Watch on Vimeo.
A simple tweet can turn an entire university upside down. An individual that is still unidentified threatened the university online by saying “Tomorrow, at approximately 9:30, I will be shooting everyone at Midwestern State.”
Police later confirmed that the threat was a hoax, but the question is: Who was responsible for the false information?
Sunday evening students began to panic as rumor of a potential shooting spread across social media.
Run out of the Office of Student Development and Orientation, the university Twitter account posted two tweets which were later deleted. One of the tweets says the FBI was involved – a claim University Chief of Police Dan Williams says is untrue.
Williams says the man named in the threat was a victim himself and that the person who made the threat remains unidentified.
“All of it originated in an internet chat room and trying to trace all of that down is just very time consuming, you know? It’s based on some information we have, I do not believe that person resides in the state of Texas. Where he resides is still yet to be determined. We have some ideas but again we’re still following those leads.”
Director of Marketing and Public Information Julie Gaynor says the police and administration were working behind the scenes in efforts to present accurate information.
Because the situation was not deemed an immediate threat, students did not receive an instant alert. Gaynor says in this situation the university had ample time – more than 12 hours, to investigate and determine credibility.
“The decision was made through the office of Student Affairs and Enrollment Management and with the police chief. There’s usually a conversation between several of us and because originally that was kind of my thought – is it time to do this? So we talked about it and it’s my understanding that alert is used for immediate threats and it’s not used for a news source.”
Both Gaynor and Williams say any chance of a threat has since passed, asserting that students, faculty and staff are safe.
CLICK HERE to read Ethan Metcalf’s story on the anonymous threat.