“NIU bad at updates. Northern Star on top of it,” one commenter posted on the Northern Star’s Facebook page at about 1:30 a.m. Thursday morning.

When a non-NIU student was shot in the leg late Wednesday near the Village Commons Bookstore parking lot, 901 Lucinda Ave., NIU remained silent for three hours.

In that time, rumors spread through Facebook, Twitter and across campus as students gathered in confusion, ignorance and fear.

NIU shouldn’t have stayed silent for so long. To refrain from taking action is still an action – one that left students in the lurch.

Not only did many nearby on-campus and off-campus residents hear the gunshots firsthand, but students across campus and DeKalb began to hear rumors about the shooting immediately thereafter.

The rumor mill churns out hasty, alarming information more quickly than ever through social media and texts.

It is the responsibility of NIU, not just local media, to get information to students to quash panic-inducing rumors as quickly as possible.

But NIU didn’t get the community information, and even when students tried to search it out themselves, they couldn’t find it.

Immediately after the shooting, students working late in the Jack Arends Art Building began to see Facebook updates and receive text messages about the incident. Photography graduate student Juan Fernandez gathered about 20 students from throughout the building to exchange information and stay together because of safety concerns. Fernandez said he looked on the NIU website for answers, found none and wondered whether he would get an NIU Text Alert.

Fernandez said he called NIU Police and asked if students were safe to leave the building, but police wouldn’t answer his question on the phone or when two officers came to talk to the students in person immediately afterward.

“I said, ‘Can’t you just say yes or no? I have students who are worried,'” he said. The police told the students they offered an escort service for walking at night, but wouldn’t even confirm there had been a shooting, Fernandez said.

It is understandable that information needs to be 100 percent accurate before it is spread – that’s the reasoning DeKalb Police used to justify waiting a week to say they had found remains of then-missing NIU student Antinette “Toni” Keller last October.

But in this case, there was information out there before DeKalb Police Chief Bill Feithen said around 3 a.m. Thursday that there was no safety threat to the campus or DeKalb community. DeKalb Fire Chief Bruce Harrison told the Northern Star an “event” at the VCB appeared to be under control just past midnight Thursday. And the Northern Star reported that information through Facebook.

NIU’s main campus emergency notification system – the Text Alert system – was not used. Feithen said it was because there existed no danger or threat.

But when the only thing students know for sure is that shots have been fired across the street from campus, what are they supposed to think? Students’ fears should not be ignored; the perception of a threat is as important as a threat.

Does NIU want students to assume that if they hear gunshots (as they tend to do near this campus – NIU’s Twitter account used the hashtag #anothershooting Thursday), the shooting is an “isolated incident” unless they hear otherwise?

That’s what NIU’s silence implies: It’s okay to venture outside if you hear gunshots, as long as you haven’t received a threat alert from us.

NIU has numerous communication channels: the Text Alerts, Campus Advisory Emails, NIU Today, NIU’s Facebook page and the NIUlive Twitter account.

As of press time, NIU has only offered information for students to find for themselves; no text messages or campus-wide emails have been sent to students.

The only communication from NIU has been the NIU Today post at 3:04 a.m. Thursday and three Tweets, the first posted around noon Thursday. Through Facebook, NIU posted three comments around 2:40 p.m. in response to the question “Was there another shooting this week in Dekalb?,” posted 13 hours earlier.

NIU failed its students in terms of safety communication when they needed it most. The Northern Star is just glad to have been there to pick up the slack.

Editor’s Note: This article originally stated NIU Today’s first post was at 6:40 a.m., about six and a half hours after the shooting. The NIU Today story was originally posted at 3:04 a.m. with an update at 6:40 a.m. An update to the article reflects these changes.