Students at the University of Waikato were falsely alarmed on Wednesday July 25 when a man wearing a trenchcoat was reported to be carrying a weapon on campus.
At 10:29am, an email was sent to all staff and students following the sighting of a “tall, Caucasian male, in his twenties... with shoulder-length brown hair”. Police were immediately called to the campus, while the University was left to simply “hope there is no cause for concern” as the man roamed free.
An update was sent out 13 minutes later to alert students that the weapon “was probably a sword [which] may be part of a medieval jousting event being held on campus today.” While the police were still investigating, the University affirmed
that they “believe there is no cause for alarm,” demonstrating the beautifully-crafted and poetic repetition that has made their English Literature department the envy of the western world, subverted only with synonyms for “concern” and “hope”.
Over an hour after this literary gem – giving their students time to fully appreciate it – the University was given the all-clear by police, who “closed” the tragic case. The intruder, who turned out to have been holding an umbrella, “had been addressed”, and the University was using the incident “to hone our own emergency response.”
Medieval Trenchcoat Knight Terrorises Waikato
