Students who lived in the Student Residence Center with Kevin Boyar wondered why they were not informed by the TextMe UNM system when their neighbor was arrested Tuesday.
"I was just walking to go eat at La Posada, and all these security guards surrounded all of us and started screaming at us to get behind a car," student Kaela Barber said. "We didn't know what was going on, so we kept walking, and they were screaming at us to run."
Barber said that when she asked what was happening, she got vague answers: "some things about a gun."
UNM set up the emergency text messaging system after the shootings at Virginia Tech in April 2007 to inform students, faculty and staff about disturbances on campus. As of February, more than 7,000 people on campus had signed up for the system.
Lt. Pat Davis said there was no reason to use the messaging system Tuesday.
"The TextMe system is used by University administrators when people need to take immediate action because there's an imminent threat," Davis said. "It's only a decision to use it when we meet the criteria. And in this case, the criteria weren't there, so there was not a discussion about it."
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Student Monica Nunez said the police would not tell her what was going on.
"We were in a lockdown, and I didn't even know," Nunez said. "I opened my door, and I'm standing in my towel, and I see these two big police officers with these huge guns, and one said, 'For your safety, you need to step to the side.'"
UNM spokeswoman Susan McKinsey said the messaging system was not designed for Tuesday's situation.
"This is an ongoing debate about TextMe. After Virginia Tech, the perception was, 'This is going to be our source for news,' and that's not what we use it for." McKinsey said. "We use it to tell people to take immediate action."
Student Joe Henthorn said UNM security wouldn't tell him what was going on because it was "official police business."
"I was like, 'I live here. This is my business. Is something dangerous going on? Should I be out here?'" Henthorn said. "If there's a guy with a gun, don't you think they should tell me, like maybe send out the text messages like they said they were going to but they never did?"
President David Schmidly said he was informed by his staff about the investigation as it unfolded.
"I was in touch with them and working, informing the officers of steps I thought they should have taken," Schmidly said. "There was a lot of uncertainty about what was known and what was not known, and you don't want to be alarmist, but you want to be prudent, and we were trying to balance those two issues."
McKinsey said she acted as liaison between Schmidly and Police Chief Kathy Guimond.
She said the officers moved so quickly that the University did not need to intervene.
"Everyone was safe," McKinsey said.
Davis said the police worked so efficiently that there was no need for the TextMe system.
"We were doing investigations to determine what type of threat was available, and if we came across any information that (Boyar) was in a position to act or do something, we certainly would have utilized the system," Davis said. "We did not come to that - that this was something we needed to evacuate the whole campus for. We didn't know if he was on campus or off and those types of things. That's why we acted as we did."
