One week ago, gunfire shattered the peace at Florida State University. Two lives were lost, six others were injured and students were forever changed.

While students are grateful for the swift action by campus police which likely prevented a greater tragedy, thousands are now calling for change they say could save lives during the next emergency: interior locks on every classroom door.

It was 11:58 a.m. on Thursday, April 17, 2025 when FSU police received the first report of an active shooter near the Student Union. Within two minutes, the FSU police chief says the suspect was neutralized. But at that moment, no one knew if the danger had truly passed.

At 12:02 p.m., a text alert reached students’ phones.

“The first thing I did was I texted my parents and I just said, I love you, there’s a shooter,” FSU Senior Meghan Bannister said.

Bannister and fellow senior Sarah Walker were just steps away in the HCB building when the warning blared over the intercom and flashed on their classroom projector: “Lock and stay away from all doors and windows and be prepared to take additional protective measures.”

But they quickly learned there was not a manual interior lock on their classroom door.

“That moment I’ll never forget—like people’s faces when they realized there was no lock on the door,” Sarah Walker, an FSU senior, said.

“My teacher at the front of the room grabbed on to the door handle and said, I will hold this door as long as I need to,” Bannister recalled.

Another student took over the second door, physically holding it closed.

“I just could not believe there was not ability for us to lock the door and that our classmates and our professor had to literally sacrifice themselves if the threat had entered,” Walker said.

Inside, students huddled in fear.

“I took a backpack and put it over my head and the girl next to me,” Bannister said.

In another building, senior Abdullah Ismail shared a similar experience.

“That’s like the first time I think I’ve felt like a genuine fear for my life ever. There are no locks on those doors, so essentially our professor had to stand there and kind of just hold the door shut for a while,” Ismail said. “The chairs are bolted to the floor… so we had nothing even to prop up against the door.”

FSU says the HCB building has a centrally managed electronic locking system that activates during lockdowns.

“During normal operations, the doors in HCB are on card-swipe access, so the rooms remain locked at all times, unless there is a scheduled class,” Amy Farnum-Patronis with FSU’s Office of University Communications wrote in a statement to First Coast News. “If you are inside the room, you can still leave — you are not locked in, but potential threats are locked out. As they could open the door from the inside, the students may have been under the impression that the doors were unlocked.”

Still, students say relying solely on technology isn’t enough.

Farnum-Patronis says ensuring the safety and well-being of the FSU community remains the foremost priority.

“Florida State University is continually reviewing and assessing our security protocols, including evaluating door locks, to ensure the safety of everyone on campus. Several layers of security are in place, including a robust police department that responded accordingly last Thursday.

Bannister and Walker started a change.org petition calling for locks on all classroom doors at FSU.

“We would like to be able to manually lock classroom doors from the inside of our classrooms,” Walker said. “We want to work with FSU on this because we know that they care, and we know that they hear us.”

In just one week, more than 31,000 people signed it. They hope their petition raises awareness not just on FSU’s campus, but on campuses nationwide.

“There needs to be a way for students to know their door is locked shut, dead bolted when there is a threat like this on campus,” Bannister said. “It’s a very simple safety protocol that unfortunately in this day and age should be everywhere.”

“There are too many variables like in a moment like that, with an active shooter that can go wrong with just electronic locks, and as people have mentioned, they aren’t on every door. I can’t give you specifics, but they aren’t on every door on campus,” Walker said.