Over the past year and a half, Bucknell has faced three swatting incidents— false reports of an active shooter that have triggered lockdowns, heavy law enforcement responses and widespread campus anxiety. While none of the calls posed a real threat, they’ve left students asking: what exactly is swatting, why is it happening here and what should we be doing to stay safe?
To answer these questions, I spoke with Anthony Morgan, Bucknell’s Associate Vice President & Chief of Public Safety, who offered clarity on the recent incidents and advice for students.
“Swatting is the deliberate calling in of a violent critical incident,” Morgan said. “It can be to law enforcement with the goal of them responding somewhere as if the incident was real.”
Originally targeting politicians and public figures, swatting has spread to K-12 schools, government buildings and increasingly universities. “Over the last four to five years, it’s been pretty prevalent in institutions of higher education,” Morgan said.
Bucknell’s first experience came on March 29, 2024, when a false active-shooter report prompted a full campus lockdown. More recently, Bertrand Library was targeted twice – on August 21 and again on Sept. 28, 2025.
On August 21, someone called the Central Susquehanna Regional 911 center on a non-emergency line, reporting a shooter in the library. At nearly the same time, Morgan received a warning from the FBI that Bucknell was about to be swatted. “Our dispatchers had already pressed the lockdown button and were prepping to send out the emergency message,” Morgan said. “I told them, stand down, don’t do it, this was not real.”
Despite that warning, Union County, Buffalo Valley Regional Police and Bucknell officers all responded quickly. But when the University attempted to reverse the lockdown, technical glitches left students locked out of residence halls longer than expected.
The Sept. 28 hoax followed a similar pattern, with the caller even playing gunshot sounds. Once again, Morgan identified the call as a hoax, but undoing the lockdown took more than 30 minutes instead of the intended five seconds. During that time, students and Residential Advisors were left outside, confused and without information.
Many students were frustrated. Trevor Seymour ’27 described his concerns:
“Bucknell needs to write an official apology to students for how they treated Sunday’s events. We are all glad that the call about a shooter was a hoax, but how Bucknell handled this event was abhorrent. Clearly Bucknell doesn’t want Residential Advisors to do their job and keep their residents safe, by lying to them about why keycards aren’t working. Clearly Bucknell believes the safest place for students to hide in the event of a shooter event is out in the open where they can be easily seen, since they lock you out of the only building your keycard has access to… Even if a shooter got ahold of a person’s keycard, and happened to know which building that card could enter, every room has a lock on it with concrete brick surrounding the door, which is way safer than being forced out in the open waiting for my eyes to see the person who can end my life.”
Morgan acknowledged the communication gap but emphasized his department’s priorities. “Our first priority is people’s safety. Our next is how do we protect the investigation and then for us, communication will fall after that. I recognize for students… they want communication to be number one… We would communicate when we have something accurate to communicate about.”
He also commented on students wanting to return to their residence halls during emergencies. “That may be the worst place for you to go until we’ve dealt with the bad actor,” he cautioned. Unlike fire drills, there are no rally points during violent critical incidents, since gathering in one place could put people at greater risk. Instead, Morgan advises students to get as far away from campus as possible.
The recent hoaxes revealed vulnerabilities in this system. “What failed for us in August, and again in September, is quickly being able to disable the lockdown,” Morgan admitted. To address the problem, Public Safety has changed its emergency protocols. Lockdown is no longer the automatic first step and the system is being stress-tested to ensure that card access can be restored without delay.
Even though the swatting calls were hoaxes, Morgan stressed the importance of student preparation. Public Safety offers ALICE Violent Critical Incident Training, where students learn what “Run, Hide, Fight” looks like in practice at Bucknell. Resources are also available in the BSAFE app.
Morgan is candid about the reality: swatting isn’t going away. “We’ve been swatted three times in less than 18 months,” he said. “Other schools have, too. We don’t want our community to be desensitized, we want our community to be prepared.”
For Morgan, the message is balance. “I don’t want students to feel anxious, scared or not have confidence in the department that is here to serve them. I want students to know their safety is our top priority. Swattings are going to be concerning, but we want students to be prepared, not paranoid.”
His advice to students is to be engaged. Attend training sessions, ask questions and learn how to respond. “The time to be prepared for a crisis isn’t in the crisis, it’s before it,” he said. “That’s only going to happen through engaging us in conversation and dialogue like we’re doing right now.”
