Spate of hoax calls about active shooters stir fear at college campuses around the U.S.

Law enforcement officers gather in front of the library on the University of Arkansas campus while responding to reports of a shooting Monday, Aug. 25, 2025, in Fayetteville, Ark. (AP Photo/Michael Woods)

Miceala Morano scrambled for cover behind a green screen in the University of Arkansas broadcast room after she received a campuswide alert about an active shooter.

As officers outside donned bullet proof vests and searched for an intruder, the 21-year-old journalism student called her grandmother, telling her, “As of right now, I’m safe. I love you.”

Monday’s threat turned out to be part of a rash of hoax calls about active shooters on college campuses -- some featuring gunshots sounding in the background -- that have sent waves of fear among students around the nation as the school year begins.

The calls prompted universities to issue texts to “run, hide, fight.” Students and teachers rushed for cover, often cowering in classrooms and under desks for safety. Officers swarmed over campuses, seeking out any threat.

That the threats turned out to be false doesn’t much matter in the moment for terrified students.

“There’s just these few minutes where all you really feel is fear, whether the threat’s there or not,” said Morano, whose childhood active shooter drills taught her to stack chairs blocking the classroom door and to climb into the ceiling as a last resort.

The hoaxes and false alarms have hit at least a dozen college campuses.

On Monday alone, law enforcement responded to calls claiming active shooters at Arkansas, Northern Arizona University, Iowa State, Kansas State, the University of Colorado-Boulder and the University of New Hampshire. More calls were made Tuesday at the University of Kentucky, West Virginia University and Central Georgia Technical College.

Latest wave of swatting calls began in Pennsylvania, Tennessee

At Villanova University, students were attending Thursday’s Orientation Mass when law enforcement received multiple calls about a man opening fire on campus with an AR-15 style weapon. Sounds of gunfire could be heard in the background of the calls.

Chairs banged together and bags dropped as students fled, recalled Ryan Scanlon, who was in eighth grade at a neighbouring school when the mass shooting occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018.

Now a Villanova senior, he joined others sheltering in the school library, waiting with little news for about an hour before police arrived to clear out buildings.

“It’s really not funny,” Scanlon said. “If you experience that real thing, you never know what can happen next.”

Hours earlier, Tennessee authorities received similar false calls reporting an active shooter with an AR-15 style rifle at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and four persons shot. Dispatchers reported hearing multiple gunshots on the calls.

“This incident was a criminal act, intended to be disruptive and cause chaos,” the school said in a statement.

The University of South Carolina also received two calls Sunday reporting an active shooter at the school’s library, with the sound of gunshots in the background.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said authorities must find whoever was behind the calls, comparing them to yelling fire in a crowded theater.

“It could have been a lot worse than it was. Maybe next time it will be worse,” McMaster told reporters.

Swatting causes terror

The goal of swatting is to get authorities, particularly a SWAT team, to respond to an address.

In an era of mass shootings, the calls create a climate of fear, sap law enforcement resources and can lead to deadly mistakes. In 2017, for instance, a police officer in Wichita, Kansas, shot and killed a man while responding to a hoax emergency call.

The FBI provided no information about a motive, but said Tuesday that it was working with law enforcement on the swatting cases on college campuses, which come as such false reports surge nationwide.

A wave of threats three years ago was believed to have come from outside the country, the FBI said at the time. The agency provided few details about the recent campus threats, including whether they are coordinated, but the calls appear to share similar traits.

Most involved multiple calls about an active shooter or shooting, and at least four included the sound of gunshots in the background.

Fred Posner, a telephoning consultant at LOD.com, said advances in technology have made it easier for people making such swatting calls to conceal their identities. Posner said law enforcement also faces the challenge of how easy phone carriers have made it for people to obtain a number.

“The only way for this to stop is to have some sort of enforcement and crackdown against the carriers that continually allow this to occur,” Posner said.

Experts fear hoaxes may make students dismiss warnings

The worry is that hoaxes will create complacency at campuses where active shooter alerts and drills have become a regular part of life.

“We live in tornado alley where people go hear a tornado warning and go outside to look,” said Mya Norman, a chemistry instructor at Arkansas who hid trembling under her desk as the Fayetteville campus remained on lockdown. “So it does concern me that we could end up with that kind of an effect.”

Ken Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, said campus officials face a “delicate balance” in keeping students and teachers on guard, but not panicked, for any real threats in the future.

For many, he said, panic lingers weeks and even months after the hoaxes.

Norman is still haunted by what happened. As she tried to reassure her son and husband, her thoughts raced. “It’s kind of rotten but in some ways I thought well it’s our turn,” she said.

Casey Mann, a 19-year-old who joined Morano in hiding behind a green screen, said she couldn’t sleep until 2 a.m. after the Arkansas lockdown.

“It’s just a scary reality the time we’re living in right now,” she said, her voice choking up. “It just makes me wonder what we’re supposed to expect in the future.”

Andrew Demillo And Heather Hollingsworth, The Associated Press

DeMillo reported from Little Rock, Arkansas, and Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas. Associated Press Writers Kate Brumback in Atlanta; Jack Dura in Bismarck, North Dakota; Michael Casey in Boston; Matthew Brown in Billings, Montana; Kristin Hall in Nashville and Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.