Campus Alert Archive
MSU

13 Minutes and a Full Run-Hide-Fight Explanation in a Single SMS

MIactive shooteremergency notificationhigh confidence
Confirmed Threat

A gunman killed three students at two campus locations. The initial alert went out 13 minutes after the first 911 call — all on-duty officers had rushed to the scene, leaving no one initially available to trigger the alert system. The SMS included a complete Run-Hide-Fight explanation defining each term.

Alerts
2
Response
13 min
Killed
3
Injured
5
Institution
Michigan State University
Public R1 · MI
~50,000 studentsMSU Alert
Confirmed Timeline

Alert Sequence

2 messages in sequence · 2 verified verbatim

INITIAL ALERTSMS
Verified verbatimMSU Police and Public Safety verbatim post on X (Twitter)175 chars
MSU ALERT: There have been shots fired near Berkey Hall on the East Lansing campus. Please secure-in-place immediately. Police are active on scene. More information to follow.
13 minutes after first 911 call at 8:18 PM EST — delay attributed to all on-duty officers responding to the scene rather than staffing the alert system
'Secure-in-place' rather than 'shelter-in-place' — MSU's preferred terminology
'Police are active on scene' — conveys law enforcement response is underway
Specifies 'East Lansing campus' — MSU has multiple locations
UPDATESMS+1 min
Verified verbatimMSU Alert Archive162 chars
Run, Hide, Fight. Run means evacuate away from danger if you can do so safely, Hide means to secure-in-place, and Fight means protect yourself if no other option.
Full Run-Hide-Fight explanation defining each term — unusually detailed for SMS
Defines 'Hide' as 'secure-in-place' rather than the standard 'hide' — institutional terminology consistency
Sent one minute after the initial alert as a separate message, likely reflecting character limit decisions
One of the most detailed RHF explanations found in any real-world SMS alert
Context

Background

The Michigan State shooting on February 13, 2023 killed three students — Brian Fraser, Arielle Anderson, and Alexandria Verner — and critically injured five others. The gunman attacked two locations: Berkey Hall and the MSU Union. The 13-minute gap between the first 911 call and the first alert was later attributed to a staffing problem: all on-duty officers immediately responded to the active scene, and no one remained available to initiate the emergency notification system. This exposed a systemic vulnerability — the very urgency that demands rapid alerts also pulls personnel away from the systems that send them. MSU's decision to send the Run-Hide-Fight explanation as a separate, spelled-out SMS was unusual; most institutions embed 'Run Hide Fight' as a three-word directive without definition. The police timeline later revealed the shooter had a note in his pocket referencing other potential targets.
Analysis

Key Findings

13-minute alert delay caused by all officers responding to scene — a systemic vulnerability in alert activation
Full RHF explanation in SMS ('Run means evacuate away from danger...') is one of the most detailed found in real alerts
'Secure-in-place' as MSU-specific terminology for the standard 'shelter-in-place'
Two-location attack (Berkey Hall and MSU Union) complicated the location specificity of alerts
Shooter died off-campus — extending the uncertainty and shelter period
Outcome
Gunman died of self-inflicted wound off-campus approximately 3.5 hours later. Three students killed, five critically injured.
Provenance

Sources

  1. Official
    MSU Alert Archive (alert.msu.edu)
    alert.msu.edu
  2. News
    Police release Michigan State University shooting timeline and troubling note found in shooter's pocket (CNN)
    cnn.com
  3. Source
    2023 Michigan State University shooting (Wikipedia)
    en.wikipedia.org
Tags
active-shooterrun-hide-fightalert-delaystaffing-gaptwo-location-attack2023
Added March 2026Updated May 2026Via manual