Lock It Down, Folks

6/4/09-Please note edit

Well, I can now cross going on lockdown off of my to-do list. 

That's right, after being protected from the world of public school during high school I had the joy of going on lockdown today at work when reports of a gunman on campus surfaced. Our first hint that something was wrong came when my friend Lucy called asking if we knew what was happening on campus as all of the P-Safe cars were out in full force. We did not, so we suggested that she return to the office as they would probably just get in the way of her picking up signs. 

Right after I hung up the phone, Andrew came into the room staring at his cell phone. "Um....apparently there's a gunman on campus". After years of hearing about Columbine, Virginia Tech, etc, I've always wondered what I would do in this situation. I'm a panicker by nature. I panic at the littlest sign of trouble. I imagined if I ever heard about the slight possibility of a person with a gun within a block of me I would immediately lock all of the doors, dive under the nearest table and start saying the rosary. That was not my reaction, nor anyone else in the office's reaction. We calmly shut the doors as a precaution and stayed away from the windows, but generally we just went about our work as per usual. Due to sure curiosity we kept checking the news reports but nothing was showing up. We called those who might worry about us, answered the phone every time it rang with the same automated message and waited. 

It was strange that waiting. I guess subconsciously we all knew that nothing was actually wrong. There were no sirens, so no one had been hurt. The seniors who were moving out hadn't gotten the message that there was a "gunman" on campus and were thus moving around as if nothing was wrong. It was pretty clear that everything was going to be alright. Yet we waited. We didn't go near the doors or windows. We waited. That minor chance, that minor thought in the back of my mind of "what if something enormous has just happened?" The complete lack of news other than vague "gunman" in a non-identified part of campus led to a lot of speculation. Having never gone through anything as dramatic as a campus shooting in my life, I wondered if this eerie calm was actually signaling something terrible. I didn't know, so I waited.

Edit: A call came through that broke the monotony of the University's automated message. "Tara?!?!? Who? Marianna? What sort of excitement am I missing!". Cindy, everyones favorite former director of CES, had taken a break from Joe Biden beach watching to turn on her television only to find that her beloved University was under attack. Cindy provided us with far more information than the automated message/text messages/website combined. She was the first sign that news had spread outside of the confines of campus, luckily the news she had heard was that the gun was fake. 

At 11:30 the media circus started as all of the area news helicopters arrived at once. Within 3 minutes of hearing their chop-chop-chop in the sky we got the all clear to leave our offices if we wanted. Just in time for lunch. I ran outside to count the helicopters. I really like when I can read what channels they're from, so I was excited to see that CBS sent both their New York and Philadelphia teams. Pretty awesome. One of the seniors wandered across the street to ask why there were so many helicopters. Whoops! You really need to work on that notification system, Princeton! 

Eventually it came out that it was just four teens looking for free booze in the dumpsters. They found a fairly realistic looking water gun and were walking around with it. OMP was hoping that it would be a student so that he could kick him out of school or something. He'll be disappointed that it was just a no good townie. I'm hoping it was the townies that have been spray painting our van to look like a NASCAR car every night. A part of me is also hoping this was all an elaborate set up by P-Safe to scare people away from dumpster diving, a Princeton post-commencement tradition. The possibility that I might be arrested for walking away with a toy from a dumpster is a fairly big deterrent. You win this round, P-Safe.