OU President Joseph Harroz, Jr. confirmed the university was a target of international swatting after reports of an active shooter on campus in an email Sunday night.
In the email, Harroz said at around 9:24 p.m. Friday night, multiple 911 calls were made claiming there was an active shooter on campus near the South Oval and Bizzell Memorial Library.
Officers were dispatched to the area, but found no evidence of a shooting. Since then, the FBI assisted the university in investigating the incident and found it was a case of swatting, meaning false calls were made to law enforcement to trigger a large response. The FBI believes the calls were made from outside the US, though the investigation is ongoing, according to the email.
OU is not the only school to have been targeted by swatting this year. Institutions in Pennsylvania and Utah had multiple instances of swatting this year. Almost 30 schools in Massachusets experienced swatting on March 28, according to reporting from the Boston Globe.
Harroz wrote in the email that over 100 officers responded to the incident Friday and an emergency alert was sent to the OU community less than a minute after the initial call.
“As relieved as we are that the incident turned out to be false, we recognize that the feelings of fear and anxiety that many of us experienced on Friday were very real,” Harroz wrote.
Shortly after the incident, students told OU Daily they spent the hour and a half between the first alert and the all-clear message scared and confused.
Harroz wrote students should reach out to campus counseling centers for assistance as well as student life and student affairs team members. Faculty and staff should seek help through the Employee Assisstance Program.
The email also included information on how to sign up for OU’s emergency alerts. Students or employees of OU can update or verify their contact information for OU emergency communication alerts by visiting ecs.ou.edu. Others can opt in to receive emergency alerts about the Norman campus by texting “OUALERTS” to 67283.
More coverage on Friday’s false active shooter reports:
This story was edited by Alexia Aston and Karoline Leonard.
