As Elavarasan, a junior studying political science-prelaw and criminal justice, processed the message and began responding to a slew of similar texts from other friends, she began overhearing people near her discussing the apparent threat. In lecture halls, dorm rooms, on social media and across campus, similar conversations were had about the now-infamous post.

Campus police ultimately determined that the post did not represent a credible threat to the university, later saying in a social media post that a person had been arrested in connection with the post and there was no threat to campus. The police department posted that update at 2:36 p.m., roughly 36 minutes after campus police became aware of the post and around 45 minutes after it was first posted.

For those 45 minutes, during which there was no official communication or alert from the university regarding the rumor, students relied on each other for information and emotional support.

"No one knew if it was an actual person or if they were a student," Elavarasan said. "But everyone knew that there was someone who said they were going to do it."

Students, parents, faculty and staff criticized the university after the incident, saying MSU failed to promptly inform the campus of the rumored threat and that an emergency alert should have been issued to the community. Some said the slow communication heightened anxiety on campus, particularly among those who survived an actual mass shooting on campus more than two years ago. 

The university and the Department of Police and Public Safety maintain that the incident did not rise to a level demanding an emergency notification be sent out. Campus police are strictly bound by federal law to only issue emergency alerts in specific, dire circumstances. In response to criticism from various parts of the community, however, the department is looking for new ways to inform the campus of potential threats and assure the campus that MSU is aware of similar matters moving forward.

"We’re committed to notifying the MSU community any time there’s an immediate credible threat on campus," said Mike Yankowski, MSU chief of police. "If it doesn’t meet that threshold, we’re asking people to sign up for the SafeMSU App."

Signed in 1990, the Clery Act requires colleges receiving federal funding to collect and report information about campus crime to the public. The law also mandates schools publish an annual security report outlining their safety and security policies and establish infrastructure for sending out two types of safety notifications to their campuses: timely warnings and emergency notifications.

Colleges are required under the law to send out timely warnings to students and university employees when a crime such as aggravated assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft or sexual assault occurs on campus and represents a threat to people’s safety. The crime also needs to be committed within the school’s Clery Geography — which in MSU’s case comprises its entire campus, several off-campus facilities and residences owned by registered student organizations — to warrant a timely warning.

Those timely warnings occasionally appear as emails in students' and employees’ inboxes warning them of carjackings or, as was the case last April, informing them of a hate crime that occurred on campus.

At MSU, smaller incidents that don’t rise to the level needing a timely warning, but that the university wants people to be aware of, can be addressed through a community bulletin. Those communications can inform recipients about a car accident at a busy intersection or tell them to avoid an area where a gas leak has been spotted.

In the event of an immediate, significant danger to the health or safety of the campus community such as a shooting or an extreme weather event, campus officials are required by law to issue an emergency notification.

When an emergency notification is issued by the university, outdoor sirens across campus go off, office phones automatically begin ringing and text messages and emails are sent to parts of, if not the entire, campus community. MSU regularly tests its outdoor siren system to ensure its readiness. The system was most recently used during a tornado warning issued during the men’s basketball team’s Elite Eight NCAA tournament game.

There’s no federal requirement for colleges to communicate about an unconfirmed threat like the one posted earlier this year — at least not until the threat is proven to be credible and posing an immediate threat to the health or safety of students or employees.

Establishing a threat’s credibility requires police to gather more information or make contact with the person who made the threat — a process that takes time. For students who learn of a rumored threat alongside, and sometimes before, law enforcement, that extra time can foster anxiety on campus.

"It just added to the panic because now you have people that are scared, who lived through this before saying ‘I don’t want to live through a shooting again,’ or freshmen asking ‘Is this going to be my first time going through a shooting?’" Elavarasan said.

That panic among students can also impact faculty who feel they should’ve been informed to be able to address their students’ fears.

Shortly after the student, an Eastpointe native named Hope Duncan, allegedly uploaded the false threat to a public Snapchat story, journalism professor Lucinda Davenport was preparing to teach her journalism history class. She prepared, as she often did, away from her email inbox.

Though she said didn’t sense an overwhelming anxiety in the room during the hour and twenty-minute long class period, Davenport recalled several students leaving early. One email she discovered in her inbox contained a screenshot of the social media post and others she received after the incident were from students saying they were scared to come to class again, she said.

The incident bothered Davenport because "students look to faculty as to know what to do" in times of emergency, she said. Later that afternoon, she emailed the class with more information on the arrest made and told the class to interrupt her if anything similar were to happen again.

"They could have assumed I didn’t care since I didn’t say anything," Davenport said. "So I needed to rectify that in my next class."

While campus police within minutes of learning about the post used sophisticated technology to locate Duncan and swiftly sent police to Case Hall, students, faculty and staff had little authoritative information to inform themselves. Davenport said that information gap contributed to anxiety over whether the rumor was being investigated at all.

"Not knowing is a hard thing for people," she said.

Had the university or campus police sent a message to students before the arrest indicating they were aware of the social media post and were actively investigating it, Davenport said, that could have reduced anxiety on campus.

Yankowski, the chief of police, said the department was acutely aware of the anxiety on campus and began drafting a statement to share with the community as officers were heading to Case Hall.

Although campus police made several social media posts and press releases regarding the rumored threat, MSU never addressed the rumor in a campus-wide email, a decision that frustrated some.

A month later, the school’s undergraduate student government passed a resolution introduced by Elavarasan to advocate for the university to improve its communication about campus safety issues. At the meeting, Elavarasan said it was "kind of disappointing and a little bit ridiculous" that MSU had not sent a message to campus about the incident.

Although she recognized MSU can’t send out a timely warning or emergency alert over a rumored, unconfirmed threat, Elavarasan said a message indicating the university was aware of the rumor and investigating would have been appreciated.

Moving forward, Yankowksi said those types of messages could be shared with students, faculty, staff and community members through the SafeMSU App, which serves as a hub for emergency alerts, community bulletins and other safety resources. Yankowski estimated the app has around 14,000 users and said the department is planning to make a "big" push for the app as students come back in the fall.

"We realize that for some people on campus, this might be a better way to communicate when there might be a perceived threat on campus or rumors or information that is floating through social media channels," Yankowski said.

One advantage of the app, Yankowski said, is that it allows people to opt in to receiving certain notifications and therefore avoid being bombarded with sensitive, potentially triggering alerts.

After MSU issued an emergency alert a month after the Feb. 13, 2023, campus mass shooting notifying the community of a knife-wielding man walking toward campus, Yankowski said, the university received several comments from the public questioning the decision to issue an alert. Since then, Yankowski said, the department has tried to be "very, very careful," as to when it issues a full-blown emergency alert.

"Everyone has their own mindset when it comes to how much information should be shared," Yankowski said. "It might not affect one individual, but for another, what they’ve experienced in their lifetime might generate more anxiety or trauma."