On Friday, Feb. 9, 2024, a person fired several shots on the University of California-Berkeley campus. While no one was hurt during the event and a suspect has been brought into custody, a student at the school has gone viral after saying that the University’s response to the event was insufficient—and could have caused greater danger for students.
In a clip with over 1.1 million views, TikTok user Conor (@cowboyconor) offers a recounting of his version of events, claiming that the school failed to message students about the shooter until a half hour after they were first reported.
“After it happened, within minutes, everyone was getting messages—but they were not getting messages from the school,” Conor says. “They would not get a message from the school for probably about 30 minutes. And when they did get a message from the school, it said something about ‘aggravated assault’ with no mention of a firearm.”
“The messages we were receiving minutes after these shots were fired were from friends, from club Slacks, [from] people saying, ‘If you’re on Sproul, hide, hide or get out or be safe,’” he adds.
This failure of communication led to confusion amongst the student body.
“Everyone was tripping out,” he recalls. “Like, do we make a run for it? Do we run to another building? Like, what’s going on? Do they have them? Is there two?”
Eventually, Conor says the school did send out a message informing people of the shooter—three hours later.
“Three hours it took the school to send out a message…mentioning a firearm, and it was like, ‘Oh someone, you know, drove on campus on [a] motorcycle, shot off a semiautomatic pistol X amount of times, was detained in two minutes,’” he remembers. “Cool. Like. hundreds of students are so tripped right now. and it took you 30 minutes to send an alert that didn’t even mention a firearm. That’s insane, bro.”
Previous school shootings and other violent events have led to stress amongst the student body, he says. Furthermore, Conor says that the school’s other methods for dealing with the resultant anxiety from these events will not solve the problem that caused this anxiety in the first place.
“I just feel like, at any point, someone could just pull out a gun,” he states. “I don’t have solutions. That’s the thing. I’m just talking because it’s just frustrating. It’s just frustrating, bro, for something like that to happen last night, and for us to be scanning Twitter and texting our friends for any information.”
@cowboyconor Hoping everyone near the scene is feeling better today🙏
♬ original sound – Conor
In the comments section, users recounted their own experience with the shooting, with some referencing the WarnMe system used by UC Berkeley to send alerts.
“The lack of information was the WORST part of it. and even when they finally did it was SO VAGUE,” echoed a commenter. “We got more info from each other than the school.”
“My friends and I were at cafe Milano and a staff member kicked us out in the midst of all this happening even after we pleaded with him to let us stay inside bc we didn’t know if it was safe to leave,” alleged another.
“I literally found out abt it from my friend across the county,” offered a third.
“I was leaving RSF and i saw like 50 people running in,” recalled a further TikToker. “We were on lockdown in the locker room for an hour and the warn me came on my WALK HOME.”
The Daily Dot reached out to Conor via Instagram DM and UC Berkeley via email.
