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Emily Walker regularly spends her time studying and working at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs during a typical school week. But after a recent wave of falsely reported threats at Maxwell and Eggers Halls, Walker said she’s become more apprehensive.

Walker, a first-year international relations and citizenship and civic engagement double major, clocked out from work at the Geography and the Environment Department around the time SU’s Department of Public Safety received a false report of an active bomb threat on February 16.

DPS received three false reports of active threats at Maxwell and Eggers Halls between Sunday, Feb. 11 and Friday, Feb. 16, including two false reports of an active shooter on Feb. 11 and Feb. 12. DPS later confirmed the two false reports of an active shooter at the school were cases of “swatting.”

Walker, who was also scheduled to work on Feb. 12 after the first false report of an active shooter, said the thought of coming to work was scary.

“There was another false shooting an hour before I had to go into work. I literally texted one of my friends and I was like, ‘I love you’ with no context,” Walker said. “I didn’t know what was gonna happen.”

Several students expressed feeling uneasy about the wave of falsely reported threats. Kerri Riley, a sophomore policy studies major, said she’s become “desensitized” because false threats were a “frequent occasion” at her high school.

Lauren Ashford, a freshman biology major, said she typically studies in Eggers Cafe but has come less frequently since the string of threats.

“I would definitely take every kind of threat with full seriousness, and I think when there’s been so much false reporting, students start to take it less and less serious,” Ashford said. “And like the boy who cried wolf, I feel like if it was actually real, so many students wouldn’t believe that it happened.

Multiple students, including Riley, said the recent string of threats were unsettling because they all targeted the Maxwell School.

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DPS is still actively investigating the false reports, a DPS spokesperson confirmed in an email statement to The Daily Orange. DPS is working with its law enforcement partners and the FBI to determine who is responsible for the false threats, the spokesperson wrote.

Lt. Matthew Malinowski, public information officer for the Syracuse Police Department, said the recent false reports of threats have been a “Syracuse University-focused thing for now” as of Friday morning.

DPS confirmed on February 12 that the two false reports of an active shooter were instances of swatting, or when a person falsely reports an emergency to law enforcement with the intent to elicit a law enforcement response. SU was previously targeted in two cases of swatting — one near College Place and the other at Maxwell Hall — in April 2023.

Cases of swatting are designed to solicit a “large” police response, Malinowski said.

“We’re going to go to the highest priority things, but if we’re getting reports of an active shooter and multiple victims, we’re going to send everything we have,” Malinowski said. “That greatly reduces our ability to respond to other calls.”

DPS and SPD are typically dispatched to a location when a report of an active shooter or a bomb threat is received, the DPS spokesperson wrote in the email. Dispatchers from the Emergency Communications Center will simultaneously check live security footage while law enforcement arrives on the scene, DPS wrote.

The department will verify if a reported threat is true or false based on if law enforcement on-site observes no “suspicious activity upon arrival” or “abnormal activity” when reviewing security footage, the DPS spokesperson wrote.

The DPS spokesperson wrote that swatting events like the recent cases at the Maxwell can induce panic.

Zihlun Huang, a teaching assistant and first-year Ph.D. student in the geography program, said he walked from Marshall Street up to Maxwell Hall as police responded to the reported bomb threat. Huang said he thought something happened at the school, especially with two false threats reported days before.

Huang, who previously studied at the University of California, Berkeley, said this isn’t the first time he’s been in this situation.

“But there’s no other option,” Huang said. “I still have to teach. I still have class.”

SU Provost and Vice Chancellor Gretchen Ritter confirmed the university is discussing swatting protocols with local colleges, universities and hospitals during a University Senate meeting Wednesday.

On Friday afternoon, Maxwell, in collaboration with DPS and SU’s Barnes Center at The Arch, hosted a session on emergency preparedness for faculty, staff, TAs and graduate students. The university is holding additional sessions on March 6 and 15.

For students like Walker, the recent false reports at Maxwell won’t change her routine much. Walker goes to class and works on a weekly basis in the Maxwell School, and she said American college students like herself grew up in a climate where shootings and threats are common.

Like Walker, Ashford said a threat of any kind is always in the back of her mind.

“It’s definitely scary to have it actively happen in a place where I am, but I don’t necessarily know if it even changes anything,” Ashford said, “which is probably the worst part about it.”

Published on February 25, 2024 at 11:54 pm

Contact Dominic: dcchiapp@syr.edu | @DominicChiappo2