There are three words that Gen Z knows better than any others: run, hide, fight. It is a commonly used protocol during active shooter situations, and has been practiced by children at public schools across the country for years.
It was the protocol used on Monday, April 10 when the City of Pittsburgh Police received calls about an active shooter incident at the Hillman Library on the University of Pittsburgh campus. Soon after, students in the library and on the streets heard four gunshots. What they didn’t know was that it was an officer shooting a back door to get into Hillman — and that the calls placed had been a hoax. It's the second active shooter hoax that's taken place in the area in less than two weeks; the first being an incident at Central and Oakland Catholic high schools that resulted in the Pitt campus going on lockdown.
Officers descended upon Oakland at 11:15 p.m., but it was not until 12:50 a.m. that the Pitt community received any type of public safety alert.
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Students across campus are expressing frustration about how Monday night was handled, especially when it comes to the university’s Emergency Notification Service (E.N.S.). A Change.org petition entitled “Hold Pitt E.N.S. Accountable To Keep Students Safe” has garnered nearly 4,000 signatures in three days. Students also organized a “Die-In” protest, scheduled for Friday, April 14, on the Cathedral Lawn.
Rashi Ranjan was studying with a friend on the first floor of Hillman when police stormed in. “I saw two officers carrying large guns and they were just yelling at everyone to get out, like they just kept yelling ‘out, out!”
She grabbed her stuff and ran to the emergency exits, only to realize they were chained shut. The stairs were locked too. “So that incited further panic. And everyone was yelling, a lot of people had started crying, and a police officer just continued to yell at us to get out.”
The students were eventually told to use the front doors and that was when they heard the gunshots. Ranjan ran as fast as she could.
But getting outside did not provide any more clarity. “I kept checking my phone because I thought, ‘any minute now we'll probably get an E.N.S. alert about where to evacuate to.’” It wasn’t until over an hour later that any public safety alerts were sent.
“I wish the university was cognizant of the fact that the lack of information during and after the event is going to have its own set of long-lasting impacts for everyone who was in that library or witnessing what was going on.”
Justine Matey was doing homework on the fourth floor with her earbuds in when she noticed students around her looking out the windows. She thought something was happening somewhere else on campus.
“I finally noticed — there's kids running out of the building right below me. Whatever all these cops came for, it's here in this building.”
Matey says that’s when they all decided to hide.
She noticed a freshman running past her, so she motioned for her to get under a desk with her. They crouched there hugging each other, using Matey’s backpack as a shield.
“I'm never gonna find out this girl's name, I'll probably never see her again. But she could have been the last person that I ever saw.”
Eventually, they heard someone yell to get out, so the students ran downstairs and found an emergency exit. “It was locked,” she says. “So this one kid with the group broke the glass on the fire alarm system device to open the latch and let the doors go. That's when they opened.”
Matey says she didn’t see a cop the entire time she was up on the fourth floor. “It just seems like they forgot about the fourth floor entirely.” Like Ranjan, she waited for an E.N.S. alert that never came.
“I didn't find out until after I was back at my friend's house, like five blocks away, that there was apparently an active shooter,” she says.
Ava Weiss was with a group of students by locked emergency exit doors when they heard the gunshots. At the time, they all thought it was a gunman.
“As soon as we heard the four shots being discharged, someone broke the glass and everyone began sprinting out of the building,” she says. “The area outside of the emergency doors led to the front of the building and not knowing where the shooter was, we decided it was safer and faster to just jump off the balcony.”
She says that the lack of an E.N.S. only added to students’ confusion. “Immediately after the incident, I was hysterical,” Weiss shares. “None of us in the library knew that the police officers were the ones who had discharged the shots, we were all imagining the worst possible scenario.”
After a sleepless night, Weiss could not believe she had to go to classes. “I was appalled that Pitt had not canceled classes and that everyone was expected to continue as normal.”
