Update: Classes Resume at NMU

A day after an on-line anonymous blog posting targeted the Northern Michigan University campus for a potential shooting rampage, life gradually returns to normal for students, faculty, and staff of the university. Still, that doesn't mean the anxiety and jitters will immediately go away. It's never easy for things to return back to normal after such a frightening experience. Yes, there was no shooting, no hostage situation, and nobody was injured. But just knowing there's a potential threat out there and not knowing when or where it's going to take place is certainly scary. All in all, I must say NMU handled the situation well and the campus was locked down in no time.

Last night, Northern officials along with NMU Public Safety determined that the threat posted against the university was no longer serious enough to cancel classes for a second day. It appears that the blog posted targeting NMU was also similar in fashion to other threats against other schools in the United States. The investigation continues as to whom sent the message and whether the posting actually was credible. At the time, NMU officials felt that the posting was credible and called on a lock-down of the campus immediately after being tipped of the posting. The decision from NMU caused a ripple-effect across the city as all of Marquette public schools were closed in addition to Marquette General Hospital increasing its security measures.

As always when something like this happens in a community, rumors start flying about circumstances that just did not occur. One involved a hostage situation on campus, others involved deaths, the city of Marquette being on lockdown, and the need of the National Guard coming in to help deal with the situation. All of those were unfounded and simply not true. You have to wonder if people like to stir up even more trouble than what's already happening. They're taking advantage of a troubling situation to get noticed and to help spread rumors, which only help to make things worse. Thankfully everything ended up well in the Marquette community and all that the situation involved was this blog posting that was threatening to the NMU campus community.

Of course there are going to be those people who think the situation could've been handled better. It seems that no matter what happens and how quickly an area is evacuated and locked down, there's always room for improvement. All in all, I think NMU handled the situation very well and alerted people in a very fast manner. The threat targeted the campus for 10:11 AM and there was little, if any activity going on at that time, except students being locked down in their residential halls. What more can you expect in a situation like the one that occurred yesterday? As the saying goes, alls well that ends well. But that doesn't mean the anxiety experienced by students, faculty, and staff at NMU will be leaving right away. And who can blame them.