“An emergency situation involving reports of an individual allegedly carrying a gun has been resolved after a campus-wide search,” the university said in a news release.

“At approximately 8:00 p.m. May 1, an individual entered the O’Connor Campus Center while carrying what witnesses believed was a weapon. Campus Safety initiated a campus lockdown in response to these reports. After thorough investigation, and with the assistance of the person in question, law enforcement identified the individual as a student who was using a glue gun for an art project, confirmed the misunderstanding, and released the campus from lockdown.”

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Universities across the country have been on high alert lately, with protests turning violent in recent weeks in some places, and other disturbing incidents, as well as false alarms.

The warnings at Colgate came on a day when the University of Texas at Austin was mourning a stabbing on campus that killed one student and injured three others.

Just a few days earlier, a machete attack at Transylvania University sent a student to the hospital.

But some students at Colgate were upset when they learned that they had been worried for hours for something that was never a threat.

The campus community was warned to stay indoors on Monday evening. “Law enforcement is on campus for reports of an alleged armed person in the O’Connor Campus Center,” a spokesman for the private liberal arts college in New York, Daniel DeVries, said in an email Monday evening. “They are searching the building. Updates will be provided as they come in.”