Life is to LIVE.

So, for those that were not kept in the loop Wednesday was a very scary day for those of us here at Northern Michigan University and the community of Marquette. The majority of us woke up to text messages from the school alerting us of a serious threat made against the school and to stay in our rooms and lock the doors.

The call came from an anonymous caller in California saying that he had read from a blog someone had posted that said he was going to "Shoot up the campus of NMU worse than the one at Virgina Tech." As soon as the tip was received, the authorities took a look at the blog and immediately took no chances. They immediately shut down the campus, evacuated everyone in the area, and sent out alerts to everyone warning them not to go near or on campus. From there the rumors on Facebook began to emerge, from an actual shooter on campus to a hostage situation. No one really knew what was happening and the school was not giving us much information. Within a couple of hours we received word that the local public schools were being evacuated and the hospital was on lock down. The rumors only got worse and worse. Soon, however, we were notified that the authorities let us know that they had the situation under control but still urged us not to come onto campus. And from there it was all an easy downhill ride.

By 3 the threat was no longer pending and the students were allowed to leave their rooms to go eat. By 6pm the local media covered talks from President Dr. Wong and the Police Chief where they let us know as much as they could about the situation without incriminating anyone or letting out too much. At 8 we learned that school would be open the next day and everything will resume as it would, the threat was no longer active.

All of us took a sigh of relief. Although some were still scared to come to school today, which is completely understandable. Our lives were threatened, our school, friends, families, lives were put on the line by some careless blogger making hurtful threats toward innocent people.

It was definitely a learning point here at NMU. We learned how to stay calm even though our brains are racing miles a second, we had each others backs and were ready to take stand, the community and NMU students came together and showed compassion and loyalty. Overall, it was scary and horrible to go through, but in the end, it was worth while to learn all that we did.



Live my friends, Live. Don't look back at what you could have done, but rather to what you want to do from now on. Live, live, live. That's all the advice I have, is to live.

Love, Lust, and LIVE always.