Earlier today, the BGSU Campus Police received a phone call from several people alleging that students were in possession of firearms inside of Olscamp hall.

Reacting to the emergency, the police immediately rushed to the scene of the crime in the hopes of arresting the perpetrators so no innocent students at our University would be harmed. When they arrived, the police arrested two people in the waiting area of Olscamp and issued a citation to another student in class upstairs. Police also took another student to the police station from outside of Chili’s.

When the dust settled and the carnage subsided, no one was hurt and a potential disaster was averted.

But unfortunately, in their haste to arrest our fellow classmates, the police neglected to notice a very important piece of information: The students did not actually have real guns, they were holding Nerf guns.

Apparently, several students have been participating in a game entitled “Humans vs. Zombies,” which involves the use of Nerf guns in a simulated battle environment analogous to playing a game of Marshmallow Wars.

We at the BG News believe the campus police should have had the common sense to take into account that the students were holding nothing more than toy guns before they decided to forcibly detain them for questioning. Police officers should be professional enough to use discretionary tactics before hastily rushing to arrest innocent students.

To say the Nerf guns even remotely resemble real guns would be a horrific overstatement. The large, bulky, bright colored toys look more like they came out of a recent episode of “Star Trek” than a gritty “Dirty Harry” movie.

However, the police are not entirely at fault.

The students who organized this game should also have understood that their toy guns, while appearing harmless, could potentially have been misconstrued as real weapons.

If these students would have just simply called the police to tell them their game would be taking place, this entire episode never would have transpired in the first place.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, students play a similar role-playing game each year. But according to MIT police, the students who play that game inform the police ahead of time.

In the future, both BGSU students and police should exercise a bit more common sense before they hastily engage in potentially harmful behavior. If they do not, the next time someone may really get hurt, and we don’t think that’s what anyone wants.