Miami University sent a RedHawk Alert on Thursday after reports of gunfire near McGuffey Hall on its Oxford, Ohio, campus. The first notice went out at around 2 p.m. EDT and told students and staff to avoid the area and follow emergency safety protocols.
About 10 minutes later, the university sent a follow-up alert naming the area around McGuffey Hall. At 2:30 p.m. EDT, it said officers had searched the building and the surrounding area and found no ongoing threat.
McGuffey Hall alerts
The sequence matters for anyone on campus because the messages moved from a general warning to a more specific location. A reader seeing the first alert would have been directed away from the affected area, while the later update narrowed the concern to McGuffey Hall itself.
Parents shared screenshots of the emergency notifications on social media, and the alerts were also shown on televisions in classrooms. That meant the warning reached people in more than one way while officers were still checking the area.
Thursday afternoon update
The university’s timeline shows how quickly the response changed. It first warned of an active threat situation, then narrowed the location, then said the search of the building and surrounding area found no issue.
The open question is what prompted the gunfire reports near McGuffey Hall in the first place. Miami University’s latest alert answered the immediate safety question for people on campus, but it did not explain the source of the report.
