CSUN Police Chief says most recent scare was only perceived threat

(FOX 11) - Tensions are high as Cal State Northridge students are in the middle of finals, there are concerns of another possible threat.

This time surrounding the school's LGBTQ center.

The Chief of Police spoke to FOX 11 Thursday about that third message found Wednesday night, revealing it was only a perceived threat.

"Essentially what it was was two students talking to each other on Instagram, and in conversation, ....what they were discussing was the December 12 threat about the active shooter incident," said Glavin.

Tensions are high though.

All of this, coming after a note threatening a mass shooting was found in Redwood Hall.

And this Swastika and shooting threat was scrawled last week in Sierra Hall.

Glavin says they are a part of a bigger picture she is seeing

"It's a much more dangerous world. It's a much more threatening world. There's a lot of ugliness, and that's really sad to see. We're seeing it at the national level, we're seeing it in the leadership of the country and I think it's abhorrent," said Glavin.

On Wednesday, school officials ordered no finals to be administered on campus.

Thursday, students had the option to take their tests on campus.

It appears few did.

"The class is maybe around 100-200 students and I'd say maybe 5 total showed up for the exam," said SCUN student Avis Anderson.

Anderson says his friend had a specific skill set she had to demonstrate in person.

That added an even greater burden.

"Her final was moved off campus 20 miles away," said Anderson.

The students weren't the only ones dealing with high stress.

CSUN's faculty president Mary-Pat Stein says professors scrambled to make tests "take-home" friendly.

"I've had other faculty that have asked me how to do it, I've helped them put their exams online when they didn't have them online at all. So it's been quite a few hours of playing with this learning management system," said Stein.

While Stein knows some students will cheat, she says professors overhauled their tests in the last 48 hours....to make it harder.

"If you just have questions on your exam that are what is blank. Of course that makes it easy to cheat. So you have to develop questions that are higher level thinking where they have to apply the knowledge they learned here to this new situation. Much harder to cheat," said Stein.