'Cruel Hoax' at Villanova Part of an 'Enormous Problem'

Students at Villanova University received the alert about 4:30pm Thursday: "ACTIVE SHOOTER on VU campus. Move to secure location. Lock/barricade doors. More info to follow." Police SWAT teams moved in and took position on campus. But 90 minutes after the initial alert, the school let everybody know it had all been a "cruel hoax," reports NBC News in Philadelphia.

• Elaborate: Authorities say multiple phone calls about the supposed shooter included fake gunfire in the background, per the AP. In one, the caller claimed that somebody had been shot.
• Fear: Posts on social media reflected the resulting fear before the calls were deemed bogus. "hi guys i'm a freshman at villanova," reads one typical tweet. "active shooter alert during the middle of opening mass for students. everyone is hiding. pleaee just keep me in your thoughts. i'm very scared."

• Another school: The Villanova scare created bigger headlines, but the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga saw the same kind of hoax on Thursday, reports the Chattanooga Times Free Press. That one also prompted evacuations from buildings.
• Pattern: "It's an enormous problem," Elizabeth Jaffe, associate professor at Atlanta's John Marshall Law School, tells USA Today of the rise in such hoaxes, generally called swatting. "One incident is a major problem so if we've got hundreds and thousands, it's an evolving epidemic." The story looks at the problem with a national lens.
• Solutions: Better technology to track callers and tougher penalties for those caught are seen as the best solutions. "We are coming to get you," said the Delaware County District Attorney's office Thursday in regard to the Villanova hoaxer.