Campus police are investigating a case of ammunition found on campus Monday.

At 10 a.m. near room 3113 in Faner Hall, a person was throwing away trash when they discovered a box labeled ammunition, said Lieutenant Harold Tucker, a police officer with the Department of Public Safety.

On Tuesday, he said, the owner of the bullets had not been discovered, but the department wants to know why they were on campus.

In order to possess ammunition or a weapon on campus, Tucker said an individual would have to go through the Department of Public Safety, and it would have to be special circumstances. Otherwise, he said, the department holds such equipment for people at the office.

“Because it’s a school — a state university — you wouldn’t be able to carry ammunition normally,” he said.

If the suspect is found, he said, they would not necessarily be punished.

“We would like to determine the circumstances,” he said.

Tucker said the box was a small variety pack of four boxes, which originally would have contained 250 rounds of different bullets altogether.

There were only two boxes left in the container, about 100 rounds of .22 long rifle type ammunition was found, Tucker said.

He said he was not sure what type the missing bullets would have been.

Because there are no surveillance cameras inside Faner Hall, Tucker said there is no way to identify the owner.

“We don’t know if it was discarded by accident or if it was a hunter who had it, we don’t know anything really about it, other than it was there,” he said.

He said the department does not suspect foul play.

Tucker said in his time with the department, this is the first case like this he has encountered. There are extra patrols in the area, but he said he doesn’t know if they will find the suspect.

“It just depends on whether it was a mistake or not, or if they may want to use (the bullets) legitimately. It doesn’t make sense to throw away perfectly good ammunition, so they may have been caught up in something, we don’t really know,” he said.

He said the ammunition is for a long rifle, common for hunting.

“People in this area do take hunting very seriously,” he said. “So to me, it’s like somebody discarding a 10 dollar bill.”

Michelle Petrik, the graduate secretary for the department of political science, said the student who discovered the shells told Petrik about it first. She said she couldn’t imagine why the bullets would be there.

“It’s ammunition, and this is a university,” she said.

She said the student who found the bullets was surprised but calm about it. After speaking to the student, she said, she called the campus police.