Seniors Jarah K. Cotton, Jazmin N. Dunlap, David G. Madzivanyika and Alexandra C. René awoke around 4 a.m. to armed officers banging on the door. 

Madzivanyika was about to open it when officers came in with guns and yelling orders to freeze and “Put your hands where I can see them,” he told The Boston Globe. 

“I was just thinking, ‘Please, Lord, not today,’” Madzivanyika said. “It’s a scary time for anybody to have a gun pointed at them, especially on a college campus.”

René told the news outlet the officers didn’t initially explain why they were in the dorm and ordered her to put her hands up.

“From what I know about how harmful the police can be, it was in my best interest to listen to them,” she said. “So I did.”

Authorities moved the students to another suite while officers searched their rooms for about 20 minutes. An officer then explained they responded to a call falsely indicating two women in their suite at the Leverett House would be killed.

“I personally did not know that the Harvard University Police Department could actually enter our rooms with that much force,” Dunlap told The Boston Globe.

Such false reports are known as swatting, incidents in which a false report is made to law enforcement about a dangerous situation such as bomb threats, active shooters or a hostage crisis, according to ABC News. Such calls have been placed en masse in recent months.

“Just the fact that call can be made … that’s unsettling. And then the response, too, is also unsettling,” Madzivanyika told The Boston Globe. “I appreciate the police trying to do their job that they’re doing. But definitely, more training is required.”

Cotton told The Harvard Crimson that being Black made the incident even more frightening.

“We were all extremely scared, particularly because my roommates and I are Black students who have been bombarded our whole lives with stories and images portraying how situations such as this had ended up terribly,” she wrote. “We felt our lives were in danger. We are traumatized.”

The incident has left the students shaken.

“It was very frightening,” Cotton said. “I felt like a criminal.”

Birukti Tsige, a student asleep in the suite across the hall, was woken up by the banging on the door. She grabbed her phone and started recording the incident, Tsige told The Harvard Crimson. She said she was concerned because the four students in the suite were Black.

According to the student newspaper, Harvard administrators emailed students about the raid at 10:20 a.m. on Monday.

“We all process activities like this morning’s differently,” wrote Leverett House interim resident dean John Nowak and faculty deans Daniel G. Deschler and Eileen E. Reynolds. “Please check in with yourself and on each other and let us know if you have any concerns for yourself or your fellow community members.”

The email offered counseling and mental health resources. Monday evening, the deans also hosted a gathering to discuss the incident.

“It at least gave students who had become privy to the situation, or who had heard it, the opportunity to hear what actually happened,” Cotton told The Harvard Crimson.

She expressed disappointment at the lack of a universitywide response to the incident.

“Being accosted in your place of residence warrants a universitywide response, warrants the president’s attention, warrants the dean of students’ attention, warrants an email, at the very least,” Cotton said.