UNC-Chapel Hill sophomore Avery Bales sheltered in place during a class when the alert warning of an 'armed and dangerous person' on campus went out at 12:55 p.m. Wednesday.
"I keep my anxiety pills in my bag," Bales said. "So I just immediately grabbed my anxiety pill before the panic attack started. That is the first thing I do, and I did last time as well."
She felt her classmates were desensitized to the alert, after experiencing a lockdown just a few weeks ago, she said.
"People were laughing and talking," Bales said. "I just think it's crazy that that's how people act on a lockdown now."
In just 16 days, UNC-Chapel Hill sent out a second report of an 'armed and dangerous person,' causing thousands of students, faculty and staff to shelter in place on campus. According to UNC-Chapel Hill officials, the alert was issued because of reports that a person brandished a weapon at the student union. No shots were fired and the suspect is in custody.
When the last alert went out on Aug. 28, UNC professor Zijie Yan was fatally shot and police arrested graduate student Tailei Qi, who was charged with first-degree murder and an additional felony for bringing a firearm onto school property.
After the 'all clear' announcement went out at approximately 2:10 p.m Wednesday, students, appearing exhausted, poured out of classrooms.
UNC medical school student Josh Romero sat on the steps of South Building, where he composed an letter on his phone to North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore and Senate leader Phil Berger calling for stronger gun control measures. Republican leaders in the General Assembly have refused to hold hearings on gun control bills, and this year passed a new law that reduces permit requirements to buy handguns.
"It keeps happening across the country and it happens here, and we continue to do nothing about it while people are affected each and every day," Romero said. "Then people become desensitized and you expect them to go back to their normal lives.”
When Romero was an undergraduate at UNC, he co-founded the university's chapter of March for Our Lives after the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High shooting.
Assistant teaching professor Nicole Berland was leading a class of mostly freshman and first-year transfer students when the alert sounded. She felt immediately angry and frustrated, she said.
"I thought, 'Oh my gosh, not again,'" Berland said. "It was the same group of students in the same class that I had during the last lockdown."
"They've been here less than a month and they've had two lockdowns," she added. "It has really interrupted their education. I feel bad for them because this is not what college was like when I was in college, and now it's what college is like for them."
The university canceled classes for the rest of the day and will resume on Thursday.
WUNC's Eli Chen contributed to this report.
