Ferrum College south of Roanoke, Va., is under lockdown this morning after school staff saw a man with a handgun in a residence hall on campus, according to news sources.

The campus alarm system was sounded at about 8am. Lockdown procedures seem to have worked very well on the Ferrum campus.

The Franklin County, Va., sheriff's office and other agencies are on the scene and Ferrum College seems to have escaped harm for the moment. Agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms are also on the scene, according to a spokesperson for the sheriff's office.

Ferrum is a private college with about 950 students. The college is only about 50 miles from the campus of Virginia Tech and memories of the shootings less than a year ago there remain vivid in this part of Virginia.

The incident also comes less than a month after North Illinois University saw 22 people shot on campus.