Bates College Students Wait Anxiously After Lewiston Shooting

At Bates College, the active shooter alert on Wednesday night interrupted a birthday celebration in a dormitory room.

The alarm, at about 8 p.m., prompted Mavy Le, 19, and 11 of her friends to take the elevator up to a higher floor. Instinct told them to get to higher ground and away from windows.

“We huddled together and waited for more news,” Ms. Le said in an interview early Thursday.

The lockdown remained in place overnight for Lewiston, Me., and the 1,800 students at Bates College, a small liberal arts institution there.

The emergency order left some students and employees stranded on campus, unable to return home, the university said in a statement. The threat of an active shooter at large also forced the school to cancel classes on Thursday.

“We know that these events have shocked and frightened our community,” a vice president at the college, Geoffrey Swift, said in the statement.

As Ms. Le waited for news in her dormitory, her family in the Portland, Me., area periodically checked in with her, she said.

At about 1:30 a.m., she was trying to distract herself from the anxious situation by studying for exams and doing her assignments — although it was not easy to focus, she said.

“My shades are completely rolled down,” she said. “I’m trying not to look outside.”

David He, 20, said that the alert left him trapped in a classroom, where he was having a club meeting.

“I crawled into a corner and hoped things would get better,” he said. He and his friends read the news on phones, listened to police scanners, called their families and texted their friends, he continued. “We were really worried and paranoid.”

Mr. He decided to dash to his dorm room nearby after some time. When he arrived safely, he locked the door behind him, pulled the blinds down and turned off the lights.

“I consider myself lucky to sleep in my own bed tonight,” he said in an interview at about 2:30 a.m., though he added that he might struggle to fall asleep as long as the gunman remained at large. “The adrenaline is still there.”