GoBlue0420

March 31st, 2012 at 11:05 PM ^

This happened in my psych class in the MLB a few years ago except it was spiderman...and someone actually called the cops thinking the purse thief was real. This one is pretty awesome tho!

LSA Superstar

April 1st, 2012 at 12:17 AM ^

If this was during the spring semester of 2009, I have a hell of a story for you about this same event from a different perspective.

I was upstairs in the MLB that day taking my last final exam of my undergraduate career, for a contemporary Russian culture class (total fluff but lots of fun). Our professor, who was awesome, couldn't have given fewer fucks and left the small class of around 25 alone, unproctored, in the exam room on the top floor of the building. We were to take the test while he sat in his office at the end of the hallway during the exam. Don't know why he didn't stay in the room with us or appoint a proctor, but whatever.

I had history bluebooks pretty much down to a science at that point and I barely cared, so I was the first one to complete the exam. Just as I was rising out of my seat to turn in my finished bluebook, everyone in the room heard this strange jingling noise and the -clomp clomp- sound of boots running down the hallway. I turned to face the doorway and I was horribly startled - a police officer (SWAT officer?) absolutely BURST into the classroom. He was wearing a helmet and had some sort of automatic weapon.

"DID ANYONE SEE SOMEONE COME THROUGH HERE WITH A GUN?" he shouted, pointing at me, presumably because I was the only one standing up.

I didn't say anything. Nobody said anything. I looked around and as I made eye contact with this one girl whom I knew from a discussion section she burst into tears.

The police officer shook his head. "Lock this door and turn out the lights and do not leave this room for any reason," he said forcefully, running down the hall. One beat later, the room erupted in pandemonium.

Kids dove from their desks and hid in the corner of the room. I vividly remember desks being upended and flying around. This other kid and I acted quickly and took the table that the shitty lectern was on at the front of the classroom and shoved it up bracing the door. We shut off the lights and huddled together in the corner, certain that the latest school shooting was occurring a few floors below. This was only two years after the tragic VT shooting, and every undergraduate at that time had asked himself or herself how we would act if something like this happened to us. What would we do? The answer, evidently, was barracade the room like we were preparing for foreign invasion. Something I'm not proud of that happened in the process - in my panic, I took a computer cart and shoved it as hard as I could towards the door as I dove towards the corner of the room away from the doors and windows. The computer equipment - one of those pedestal towers with the multimedia setup - virtually exploded. I'm sure it cost thousands of dollars to replace or repair.

We sat in the darkness for about twenty minutes. I remember being very scared. Four or five girls were crying silently. I remember this one guy who had a look on his face of utter grief, like he thought he was going to die. I guess we were all wondering what would happen. I thought about going out the window. I didn't know what was going on. I texted my roommate that I was safe and not to worry.

I know this sounds ludicrous considering you all already know the big reveal - the kerfluffle was caused by some doucher playing a prank whilst dressed up as Spiderman. But at the moment we were upstairs in the top level of the MLB, we were really all scared for our lives because we had no idea it was just some silly prank. We didn't know what to do or say. We wondered if we should try to escape or to stay put. We wondered if we would have the courage to try and fight if the gunman or whatever bogeyman we imagined had kicked all this off tried to barge into the room. We wondered if we would just die quietly just trying to take an exam.

The worst part? We only got the word that we could safely get out of that room because I called DPS. I was the one to place the call because I worked at the Mcard Center and I was the only one who knew that DPS's number was on the back of all of our Mcards. The security guy on the other end of the line let us know that the situation had been resolved "a long time ago" and that there was no reason we "couldn't leave the building." The professor didn't come to check in on us and the police never came back - we were kept in that state of fear and captivity for upwards of twenty minutes.

The weird part about this story is that I can't tell it because nobody should believe it. There was no article about it in the Daily or anything short of a crime note saying that police had been called because of a prank in the MLB. It was so surreal and was one of the four or five strangest things that has ever happened to me, and it was definitely the time in my life I was the most scared. Whenever I hear news stories reporting that there might be a shooter on the loose on campus somewhere in the US, I always hold my breath. As stupid as this whole situation ended up being, I know what that fear feels like.

Bleedin9Blue

March 31st, 2012 at 11:05 PM ^

I'm assuming that the UM Patriots have finally been resurrected- thank goodness, they were hilarious.

I'm glad that the professor rolled with the punches so well.

tdcarl

March 31st, 2012 at 11:09 PM ^

Last year during Orgo we had a group of people stand up and say "OH NO, OH NO, OH NO." A guy dressed as the Kool-Aid man then walked across the bottom of 1800 and said, OHHH YEEAAAHHHHH" It was funny and our professor, Wolfe, was totally cool with it.

EECS Grad '15

March 31st, 2012 at 11:20 PM ^

My friend actually helped put this on. Wish I could have seen it live (not really, chem sucks), but she says that everyone close to the mariachi band was dying when they first walked in. Also superman in Physics lecture was awesome.