At 4:30 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 25, Kansas State alerted the student body of a potential active violence situation at Hale Library. The Riley County Police Department arrived within minutes. Soon after the police arrived on the scene, the call was revealed by RCPD to be a hoax, and they worked quickly to de-escalate the situation on campus.

Michelle Geering, division of communications and marketing representative for K-State, said the call went through Riley County Dispatch on their main administrative line, describing an “act of violence situation.”

“So that led to Kansas State [Police], with the assistance of Riley County Police, to immediately [respond] and then they were able to determine that it was a swatting incident similar to the several that took place recently across the country at other universities,” Geering said. 

Dawson Wagner, assistant director/instructor of A.Q. Miller School of Media & Communications at K-State, said students were left to make “assumptions”  through social media apps such as Yik Yak about the police presence at Hale, spreading speculations in an attempt to warn other students of danger.

“… People were confused, because people didn’t know what to think on Yik Yak, whether or not Yik Yak is a legitimate source, which it shouldn’t be,” Wagner said. “But unfortunately, people do check that [social media] immediately, as soon as things are happening on campus, and they post stuff in there saying, ‘Yes, this is happening’, or ‘This isn’t happening’, or ‘What’s going on.’ … There’s so much misinformation spread, so we’re just trying to get the facts straight.”

Geering said she thought the event was “an interesting occurrence” for any bystanders at Hale at the time of the swatting incident to witness.

“It was an immediate response because we take all of these reports seriously,” Geering said. 

No injuries were reported.