"Now I'm between 6' 1" and 6' 6" depending on which convenient store I'm leaving."  -Ron White

I'm confused. Lockdown @ 12:05. Then bars open early to accomodate. Bars were open long before 12:05.

Do other campuses bars not open at 10 or earlier on Weds? I really dont know. I thought a bar opening at 10 am was late.

It seems to me that there are two possibilities here: 1. We experienced the biggest overreaction in the history of overreactions (he says with a tad of hyperbole), or 2. McDavis and company know something about this situation that we don't know and that hasn't been made public.  For the moment, I'll give the administration the benefit of the doubt; however, it there isn't more to the story than we already know I reserve the right to criticize these actions of closing down the school and postponing the game.  

I'm puzzled by the fact that in the first story I read about this (Messenger breaking news email, I think it was), the perp was described by the woman as having a "hand gun."  A more recent WOUB story quotes her as saying that the gun was a "semi automatic."  Now, most hand guns are technically semi automatic weapons, but that term conjures up images of machine guns and the like.  I wonder what the victim actually said.    

The ESPN article comment section would drive Grammar Nazis up a wall.

Funny comment

"No shots fired, just shots taken"

There's no maybe about it.  This was a complete overreaction to Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech.  If you take two seconds to review the situations you realize that they aren't remotely similar to the events in Athens yesterday. Spree killers don't rob someone at gunpoint and let them live.  If the guy had shot the guy he robbed then maybe I could understand.  And then to close classes an hour after the police are no longer actively looking for the guy is absurd.  This was some administrator trying to make his or her mark.   I don't even care about the game being cancelled. I just hate seeing blatent stupidity tied to my school.

Has anyone ever thought this could all be a hoax, Te'o style?  I mean really - anyone could say they were robbed of $5 at gunpoint and in today's environment the whole city would crumble.  Today it did!  I'm not saying it didn't happen but would not be at all surprised if it didn't either!

   Today's Messenger has a eerily similar scenario concerning a Cleveland student's Mom calling and voicing her concerns.
Stay tuned for the lawsuit.

Again, who cares about the basketball game.  Once the campus is closed then it was done.   The real question is if this was such a scary situation why didn't they secure the campus earlier?   And if it's such a scary situation why didn't they close the campus and make people shelter in place?  Instead they closed the university and people went about their business.  The response didn't solve a thing. It didn't keep people out of harms way.  

The answer to your questions above are:

"Yes, there was a gunman loose in the area but we have searched and determined that he is no longer in the area.  No shots have been fired so while it was a scary situation, experience has taught us that this is no longer an imminently dangerous situation.  We will keep our personnel on high alert but there is every reason to believe that this individual is out of the immediate area at this point since no one has reported sighting any individuals meeting that description since early this morning.  We will do everything in our power to find this individual and bring him to justice."

As for your response about "this is life".   It is life.  An unfortunate part of life but life just the same.  And what the university did  yesterday didn't alter a single thing about what happened yesterday. All it was was them doing something just for the sake of them appearing to do something responsible.  And I'm just wondering but since they haven't caught the guy why is today any safer than yesterday?  I mean, there's a gunman on the loose!!!!  How will my daughter ever survive?

As an employee, I had these observations.

1) The safest place for me (I felt no danger, period, by the way) is probably not outside of my locked office where the bad man is likely to be, on my trek to my vehicle.

2) As I was sitting in traffic by the Convo, I realized if a bad guy in a car ever wanted to blend in and slip out of town, it's probably now among the other 300 cars on Shafer.

3) It was nice that my college emailed me almost immediately.  My email from the president's office informing me of the cancellation hit my inbox at 3:03PM.  I was home before 1:00PM.  Thanks for the heads up, Rod!  And,

4) Yes, this was a massive overreaction.

One of my patients just said....".yeah. Pathetic that they don't start shooting the lawyers...."
 
WHy is it that the first thing on everyone's mind these days is less about the event and the situations that arise from them and more about the legal ramifications? is the law now,  and the fallout from an event bigger than the humanity of the situation?

Just getting back from abroad I am really questioning our legal system and what it has become. WOnder how productive americans would be if the legal system was not such a drain in everything we do. Still the greatest country in the world but we have lawyers running congress, influencing our every action and giving criminals more rights and leeway than victims. Crime and no punishment.

It is a sad day when a petty burglar has a whole town held hostage from the prexies office down to the AD. I am all for making sure everyone is safe and sound but that threat of a lawsuit driving policy begins with the legal system tthat is keeping america gagged and tied down...... Perhaps the only ones showing any degeree of  human sense were the folks who clearly analyzed the threat and figured it out early

It clearly could have been handled better, and I hope they learned some valuable lessons this time, but I hardly think there were obvious choices when the call was made. I also don’t think the school was thinking first about lawsuits. There’s no reason to doubt McDavis’ statement about the intentions of the shutdown. The way it played out made it look stupid and overblown (and I hope they’ll never evacuate the campus at the same time ever again) but doing nothing after an armed man is seen running onto a campus is simply not a viable option.

I hope the school responds better if something like this happens in the future, but Brian is right about all the armchair second-guessers in here.