At Bates School, the energetic shooter alert on Wednesday evening interrupted a birthday celebration in a dormitory room.
The alarm, at about 8 p.m., prompted Mavy Le, 19, and 11 of her mates to take the elevator as much as a better flooring. Intuition instructed them to get to larger floor and away from home windows.
“We huddled collectively and waited for extra information,” Ms. Le stated in an interview early Thursday.
The lockdown remained in place in a single day for Lewiston, Me., and the 1,800 college students at Bates School, a small liberal arts establishment there.
The emergency order left some college students and staff stranded on campus, unable to return dwelling, the college stated in an announcement. The specter of an energetic shooter at massive additionally pressured the college to cancel lessons on Thursday.
“We all know that these occasions have shocked and frightened our neighborhood,” a vice chairman on the school, Geoffrey Swift, stated within the assertion.
As Ms. Le waited for information in her dormitory, her household within the Portland, Me., space periodically checked in together with her, she stated.
At about 1:30 a.m., she was attempting to distract herself from the anxious state of affairs by learning for exams and doing her assignments — though it was not straightforward to focus, she stated.
“My shades are fully rolled down,” she stated. “I’m attempting to not look outdoors.”
David He, 20, stated that the alert left him trapped in a classroom, the place he was having a membership assembly.
“I crawled right into a nook and hoped issues would get higher,” he stated. He and his mates learn the information on telephones, listened to police scanners, referred to as their households and texted their mates, he continued. “We have been actually fearful and paranoid.”
Mr. He determined to sprint to his dorm room close by after a while. When he arrived safely, he locked the door behind him, pulled the blinds down and turned off the lights.
“I think about myself fortunate to sleep in my very own mattress tonight,” he stated in an interview at about 2:30 a.m., although he added that he may wrestle to go to sleep so long as the gunman remained at massive. “The adrenaline continues to be there.”