Fake Gunman at Princeton Elicits Real Fear, PUPS’ Tail Retreats Between Legs
At 11:24 on Friday night, a student reported to Princeton's Public Safety Office (PUPS) that a man was "sprinting" around campus with an AK-47. At 12:40, PUPS notified the students with this curt, misspelled, and mysterious text message or email:
This is an actual emergency and not a test. At 12:40 AM today, there is an unconfirmed report of a student-age mail [sic] carrying a weapon in the area of Spelman Hall. [sic] Stay inside . [sic] Public Safety has recommended that all students remain inside until further notice. Do not go outside to travel to another building. Close and lock the doors and windows.
This snippet had been sitting in the IvyGate tip box all weekend, until the Prince dished the real story. Nothing to be afraid of! It was only a student carrying a non-functioning weapon—that is, an AK-47 replica. Nevermind that whole Virginia Tech slash deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history thing. Princeton students were basically there and dodged the bullets.
Wait a second. It's took PUPS 80 minutes to tell students that there's someone patrolling campus with an AK-47?!?! Imagine being the parent paying $40K+ to send her son or daughter to that nice campus with such a cute name for their police officers (who don't carry guns) and getting this news. Your head would explode.
Read the students' reaction and the logic behind the delay after the jump.
The very best part about Ivy League scuffles with the real, violent world are Princeton students who think they know all about it. See the comments from Erica Greil '10, the eye-witness-on-the-scene and the hero who notified PUPS of Corporal Dipshit with the Kalashnakov:
“It looked like he had a weapon in his hand. It looked like an AK-47,” she said. “I lived in a third-world country, so I know what they look like ... We could definitely tell it wasn’t a water gun or a nerf gun.”
As one Prince reader appropriately pointed out today, having lived in the third-world does not make one a weapons expert. On the other hand, going to Princeton, does make one a nerf gun expert. So we'll call it a draw.
Now onto the issue of Princeton students being royally fucked if anybody does decide to shoot at them. The Princeton Borough police evidently did respond very quickly to the first call, and within 6 minutes or so, were themselves pointing very big guns at students' faces. According to a Prince reader calling himself "witness":
If the first call was at 11:24, then they responded pretty damn fast, because at 11:30, a borough police officer had an M16 pointed at my face asking if I'd seen anyone with a rifle. 6 minutes from an unconfirmed report to armed officers? That's insanely fast, esp. since this was Borough, not PSafe.
Alright, so the cops definitely don't want to scare the little Tigers. The M16 is a more expensive, more modern version of the AK—that's what wiki said—so they're definitely not the terrorist sprinting around campus. Meanwhile, the real safety patrol must've been sorting out the working to use for that not new text-message alert system. Judging by the looks of the original message, it was probably sent out from a first-time iPhone user.
Here's to another exchange of the post-Columbine, post-9-11, post-Bush fear economy. Don't know what that means just watch Gus Van Sant's Elephant—not a good a date movie, though. As a "Students rattled" article in the Prince revealed on Saturday morning, kids were rattled. And they responded like Princeton students:
Tyrell Hall ’12 said he was in his Holder Hall dorm room when he received the alert telling him to stay inside. He then “decided to go take a nice, hot shower.”
“When I went to the shower, I was surprisingly very paranoid,” he said. “Some guy walked in, I saw the door open, so I had my brush ready for the attack, and I saw that it was just another civilian such as myself.”
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March 9th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
pton ‘08: this is such an embarrassment. glad no one was actually ever in danger though.
March 9th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Just to clarify (and I left this comment on the Prince website as well, because I am equally unamused by my quote and would mock another thoroughly for it)
Clarification of my quote:
That was not a direct quote. My quote to the Prince (which was given at 3:30AM), and to PSafe, and to the Borough, and to any who asks, is:
“I spent some time in a third-world country / Africa / Rwanda [depending on who I am talking to], and it reminded me of the guns I saw when I was there, and somebody told me those guns were AK-47s”
I saw actual live AK-47s during traffic stops in Rwanda and was able to recognize a similar shape and used that similarity to describe the gun to authorities and the Prince so they could use it for identification; it just happens that it actually WAS an AK-47.
I in no way am implying that “the third world” is full of people running around with semi-automatic weapons or that I am such an expert on firearms that I was able to identify said weapon 100% accurately while running past me in the dark. But if I hadn’t been pulled over for speeding in Rwanda, I would have just been like “Oh it was a big gun scary!”
March 9th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Erica: did the Prince actually misquote you? Because if they did you should confront them about it. A newspaper can’t shoddily paraphrase someone’s words then attribute them to that person.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
I’m pretty sure everyone here calls it p-safe or p-safety, not PUPS…
March 9th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
That Tyrell Hall quote is frickin amazing.
March 10th, 2009 at 12:08 am
I literally just copied the quote above and was going to mock you, but then I saw your comment and decided against it. Way to preempt! Apparently you’ve lived in first-world countries too and seen the carnage that blogs can cause!
March 10th, 2009 at 12:31 am
Ivygate is one of my homepages; I was anticipating the fall out from said quote.
and @P’11: I’ve had it happen before, and other people have had it happen to, and their excuse is that as long as the paraphrase is essentially the same as the actual quote and not a fact they consider it quote-enough. They originally had my class year wrong, too, and I figured I’d just complain about the one thing and hope the Prince wouldn’t print such a ridiculous statement, regardless of actual-quote or not. I certainly did not say “I lived in the third-world and therefore I know for certain what a gun looks like because the third-world is dangerous and full of guns like my quote implies” or anything along those lines.
March 10th, 2009 at 1:54 am
I’ve had the same thing happen. Even when I gave an interview by email, they “paraphrased” my answers by saying I had said things I never said, which apparently was an “appropriate amalgamation” of what I’d said, according to their response to my complaint. But I figured it wasn’t really worth it to fight it. Annoying, but not a big deal. It makes me wonder what they get wrong about things that do matter, though.
The lesson learned: if you’re ever interviewed by the Prince, do it by email and don’t trust them not to misquote you anyway.
March 10th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
All newspapers paraphrase a lot to get the most interesting quote possible out of you, but Ivy Dailies are notorious for completely twisting words and changing meanings. They do it under the guise that they are actual journalists.
March 10th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
the AK is not a different version of the m16. they are completely different weapons.
March 10th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
yes, one is U.S. manufactured the other Soviet. I can’t believe more people didn’t take an interest in military ordinance as kids.
March 10th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
It looks like the Prince is just as bad as Dartmouth’s daily. Hopefully no one judged this girl too harshly.
March 10th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
Wait isn’t P that weird Ivy with the ROTC / turn-students-into-professional-killers program? Why didn’t they take this guy out? Or maybe he’s one of theirs. Ivygate should investigate this. Aren’t those homophobic neanderthals always saying how they deserve to be on campus because they supposedly protect us and our right to protest bla bla bla? Where’s the protection huh?
March 10th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Wait isn’t P that weird Ivy with the weird ROTC / turn-students-into-professional-killers program? Why didn’t they take this guy out? Or maybe he’s one of theirs… Ivygate should investigate this. Aren’t those homophobic neanderthals always saying how they deserve to be on campus because they supposedly protect us and our right to protest bla bla bla? Where’s the protection, huh?!
March 11th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
Jeez, Ivygate, you don’t need to be a weapons expert to ID an AK47. It would actually be more surprising that a moderately worldly person couldn’t ID an AK-47 or derivative. Also, as some other posters pointed out, an M16 is not any version of the AK, but I think that comment was more tongue and cheek; both rifles do have very interesting histories, but that is an aside for another time…
June 3rd, 2009 at 1:30 pm
However I did copy you and decided this was the best thing to do. Way to preempt! Apparently you’ve lived in first-world countries too and seen the carnage that blogs can cause!