(The Hill) -- College campuses across the country saw a terrifying start to the new school year with a rash of swatting and fake threats that has caused students to barricade themselves in classrooms and dozens of police officers to rush to the schools.

From Arizona to Pennsylvania, universities are experiencing hoax calls that include reports that students were shot and killed, with the sounds of gunfire in the background, only for officials to show up and find no real threat was ever present.

The stakes of such emergency responses were driven home on Wednesday, when a real shooting at a Catholic school in Minneapolis took the lives of two children and left 17 other people wounded.

Fake threats against schools are not a new phenomenon but have been rising in recent years, fueled, exper

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