Colleges and guns are often the worst fear of students, teachers and parents, so an overreaction to a toy lightsaber is understandable—although slightly comical.
Students and staff at Farmingdale State College on Long Island in New York were told a gun was on campus on Wednesday. They were urged to stay safe and “shelter in place” while police investigated a report that someone was assembling a rifle in the school parking lot, according to the Associated Press. The call came in at around 9:40 a.m.
According to college spokeswoman Kathryn Coley, the rifle was a Star Wars toy and police concluded that he wasn’t a threat to anyone. And by 10:45 a.m., the school had posted on their Facebook page to announce that the situation had been resolved and that there was no threat.
According to the Farmingdale Patch, a representative of the college said on Twitter that the school was never actually on lockdown—Police were just checking the situation out, and quickly found out that the threat was simply a lightsaber.
The growing fear of mass shooters, especially on college campuses, makes these incidents likely to happen frequently. It’s pretty disturbing when a lightsaber being mistaken for a gun is bigger news than an actual gun on campus.