A report of a shooting at the College of New Jersey early today turned out to be a hoax, but college officials acted promptly to get out word of a possibly dangerous situation on the campus, according to the student newspaper, The Signal.

Matt Golden, the institution’s director of communications and media relations, told the newspaper that the campus police had received a 911 call shortly before 6 a.m. and that he was informed at 6:25 a.m. In a series of campuswide e-mail messages, starting at 6:38 a.m., Mr. Golden said, students were advised of the report, urged to remain at their locations, and later informed that the police had found no evidence that a shooting had actually occurred but were taking security measures. Finally, at 12:45 p.m., a message was sent confirming that the 911 call was a hoax.

In addition to the online warnings, police officers went door to door in the dormitory that the caller identified as the shooting site, accounting for its residents and giving students safety instructions. “They came pounding on my door at 7:45 a.m. and said there was a possible shooting,” Katie Ryan, a freshman, told The Signal.

The college, like others across the nation, has recently updated security procedures in the wake of the mass shootings at Virginia Tech last spring. Mr. Golden told the newspaper that the college had not put a new campus-notification system in place yet, but had achieved its goal of informing people about a potential emergency situation. The campus was not under lockdown this afternoon, but the police were continuing to carry out heightened security measures. —Charles Huckabee