TimeSocket

Appalachian State University locked down all campus buildings for more than an hour Monday as authorities searched for a man who was seen carrying a gun nearby.

Officials lifted the lockdown shortly after 6:30 p.m., after no further sightings of the suspect were reported.

“Both Appalachian State police and Boone police have been consulting, and they think that the threat no longer remains,” said school spokeswoman Lynn Drury.

Officials asked students to use caution as they left campus, which is roughly 100 miles northwest of Charlotte in the western North Carolina mountains. Authorities remained on alert and asked people to report any suspicious activity. Monday night classes were canceled, but were set to resume Tuesday.

An alert posted on the university’s Web site said a white male in a black Pink Floyd T-shirt and wearing a dark jacket and ski mask was seen near campus with a small black handgun. No shots were fired and no injuries were reported.

Forrest Gilliam, a senior and president of the school’s student government association, said students on campus were alerted over campus public address systems and by e-mail. He was locked down with other students in the campus’ student union.

“Everyone’s relieved,” Gilliam said. “With the technology we had in place, I think communication to the students went well.”

The lockdown came just hours after school officials sent a campus-wide e-mail to students updating them about plans for an emergency messaging service. Many universities are deploying such systems in a response to last year’s shootings at Virginia Tech, where a student gunman killed 32 people and himself last April.

Earlier Monday, police questioned a man who carried a gun into Middle Georgia College in Cochran, about 120 miles south of Atlanta. The college was placed on lockdown as authorities searched the campus. It was lifted around noon, and classes resumed, said college President Mary Ellen Wilson.

The man realized he had a handgun in his vehicle when he went to exchange cars with his brother, a cafeteria worker at the school, and stuck it in his waistband, Cochran Police Chief Jon Thrower said. A student then reported seeing a man with a gun.

During the lockdown, a separate call to a Veterans Affairs center in Dublin touched off another alert when the caller said a student was being held hostage in a dormitory. That call was believed to have been either a hoax or a misunderstanding by a parent about what a student had told them, Thrower said.

At any rate, it led to the dorms being emptied a second time, he said. Meanwhile, authorities learned of the car exchange between the cafeteria worker and his brother, Thrower said.

The Giants have officially signed S Sammy Knight. According to someone familiar with the terms of the deal, it’s a three-year, $5.15-million contract with a $1.25-million signing bonus. Not a bad deal for both sides after Knight signed a one-year, $820k deal with Jacksonville last year.

The person familiar with the deal also said Knight has been told he will be a starter, though it’s not clear if it’ll be at strong or free. Again, not that it matters much because both spots are similar in the Giants’ D.

“We’re excited to have a veteran of Sammy’s caliber joining our secondary,” GM Jerry Reese said in the team’s release. “We were attracted to how smart he plays and how productive and physical he plays. We think he will thrive in our defensive schemes. He brings a lot of leadership to the team, especially to the secondary, and he is a real pro.”

He’s the kind of player coach Tom Coughlin will love. After all he’s missed only two games to injury in his 11-year career and has played in 156 consecutive regular season games, the NFL’s 14th-longest current streak.

“Sammy Knight is a durable, physical player with 42 career interceptions,” Coughlin said. “He comes to the line of scrimmage extremely well. He’s a smart player who gets everybody lined up. He played in Kansas City for (secondary/cornerbacks coach) Peter Giunta, so we know all about the quality of the man. We feel like with his love of the game and his attitude about the idea of team that he’ll be a real nice fit for us. Sammy gives us another quality veteran who will definitely help our young guys in their development.”

“I think this is a great situation for me,” Knight said. “This is a great staff, first and foremost, and a great organization. They won the Super Bowl, and they have a lot of people coming back, so the opportunity to win again was definitely one of the determining factors in me coming here.”

The price for a 30-second commercial spot on television for the U.S Superbowl has risen to US$2.7 million.

The Super Bowl this year will draw new advertisers, including Planters packaged nut company, Kraft Foods, Cars.com, an online auto classified advertising company, McClatchy, Tribune, Washington Post and Belo Corp.

The advertisers expect to reach more than 90 million people in a single shot, something increasingly hard to do in any medium.

Only the largest of television’s events: the Super Bowl, the Olympics, the Oscars and the Grammys have the potential to pull in tens of millions of people.

Last year’s viewership of 93.2 million was close to the all-time record of 94.1 million set in 1996, and many believe that record could be surpassed this year.