The school told people to seek shelter and stay where they are. It also canceled classes for the day.

The school did not immediately say what prompted the investigation. But one student told The Associated Press it was prompted by what happened midway through her 11 a.m. physiology class.

"All of a sudden, we heard someone yell, 'You're a nice guy! You're a nice guy!' and sounding scared," said Tori Danielson, who was sitting in the back of a lecture hall in a class of more than 350 people. "Everybody started running and screaming out of the room, and our professor told us all to run. And everybody just ran out."

Danielson said she did not hear gun shots and did not see anyone get hurt.

"I didn't hear anybody say that there was a weapon, and I didn't see if there was. I was too far away," she said.

Steven O'Donnell, head of the Rhode Island State Police, says there is no evidence of an active shooter.

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"Despite being an integral part of life when the token was added to the game in the 1930s, the iron has fallen out of favor with today's fans," the Rhode Island-based company said in announcing its replacement: a cat.

But even with the rise of wrinkle-free fabrics, the iron, it seems, is holding its own.

While U.S. iron sales declined in volume 1 percent last year, they were up nearly 3 percent overall from 2007 to 2012, according to the market research group Euromonitor International. Over the same period, steam generator irons — which make more steam than traditional ones, speeding up the process — experienced what the firm called "enormous growth." Sales were $368 million last year.

Kim Kalunian irons nearly everything: sweaters, dresses, pants and even jeans. The 23-year-old digital producer at WPRO Radio in East Providence inherited her distaste for wrinkles from her mother, whom she describes as a "fierce ironer." She finds the chore — and the hiss of the steam — therapeutic.

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