The Lockdown - Dorm Style

**Editor's note: This blog was written by UP staff writer Cierra Robinson

I woke up to my mother’s “My Fave Five” image buzzing in my ears.

“There was a shooting at your school,” she said, wide awake.

“Here?” I said, rubbing my eyes and looking at the clock.

“There!” she screamed back, forgetting it wasn't even 7 a.m.

My mother proceeded to blare the local news back home [in Sunrise, FL] into the telephone receiver. It was a few minutes past 7 a.m. and the story hadn’t been re-aired on the news channels in Boca Raton. I caught the back end of the latest broadcast.

When I learned as much information as was being offered, I intended on going back to sleep. But with sleepy eyes, I peered through my dorm room blinds as the sun cut into my corneas. I saw two people that I could not identify from my sixth-story room. They walked quickly, as if they didn’t get the memo. Normally the housing lawn was vacant at that hour.

I was confused. I hadn’t heard a single siren last night, even though I was awake when the sirens were apparently going off. I received no text message from the university but four from a friend in another dorm urging me to stay inside due to the shooting. I did receive the university-wide e-mail alerts from FAU police once I checked my e-mail the morning of the incident.

After learning the seriousness or the lack of seriousness about the shooting, students became more concerned with possible rescheduled final exams if the lockdown continued passed Wednesday, rather than their safety.

“Yeah, it is a big deal, but putting us on lockdown is a little extreme, but I understand people need to be safe,” said freshman Amanda Cohen.

Other students thought the shooting was not serious enough to call for a lockdown.

Freshman Marilyn Rios said, “It’s not even that serious.”

The waiting hours during the lockdown were confusing. I didn’t know whether to stay in my room or go down stairs. I wondered about work and the pay I was missing, whether I had to cancel my poetry club meeting, or if I should just go back to sleep.

Waiting there in my bed, I imagined that the gunman was in my suite because of irresponsibility. Our door is often left unlocked, and I couldn’t recall if I’d locked it that night. I finally gathered my courage from a friend over the phone and exited my bedroom because, it had been rumored, that food was in our dorm lobby.

After walking to my friend’s room on my floor, I looked out of her window and saw a lot of activity. Students were leaving the building in beachwear, or carrying cardboard boxes and bins to their trunks. It was said that we were able to leave the dorms but could not return.

When my friend and I had gone down to the lobby to check out the food situation, I overheard an RA announce to a group of boys if they had flights to catch they could go, but they were encouraged to stick around.

The rest of the waiting hours (until 12:30 when the lockdown was lifted) consisted of watching movies, sleeping, and consuming Ruffles, peanut butter and jelly and turkey sandwiches, bananas, fruit punch, doughnuts, and sponge cake.