Colleges face bomb threats nationwide

Sophia Holland, a freshman at Louisiana State University, was at church Monday morning when her phone started buzzing — texts asking if she was OK were pouring in.

Holland realized LSU had received a bomb threat, and campus had been evacuated.

“People were freaking out,” she said.

The threat was the latest in a string of recent bomb threats at college campuses across the country.

On Friday, Hiram College, the University of Texas at Austin and North Dakota State University all received bomb threats.

The wave of threats raises the question of how UNC would respond to a similar event.

Randy Young, spokesman for the UNC Department of Public Safety, said the department stays alert to events going on at other universities and examines the University’s policies after alarming events.

Young said bomb threats at UNC would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and students would be informed through Alert Carolina messages.

He said details about bomb threat procedures could not be released to avoid giving copy-cat assailants the upper hand.

At UT-Austin, students were not informed of the threat until about 10 minutes before the expected detonation time.

Rhonda Weldon, UT-Austin spokeswoman, said the university is re-examining its procedures and making adjustments for the future.

“I think the university made the right call. Could we have done it better? I think we could have done it better,” she said.

She explained evaluations had to be made before emptying the entire campus of more than 74,000 students, faculty and staff.

“We’ve never evacuated the entire campus all at once before,” she said.

But UT-Austin freshman Sean Gajjar said he wasn’t happy with the university’s late notice.

“I feel like if it was that much of a threat to call for an evacuation, they should have told us about it immediately,” he said.

He said most students were very calm during the evacuation process. The text students received didn’t specifically state the threat was a bomb threat, so people took their time when leaving campus, Gajjar said.

Robina Ghosh, also a UT-Austin freshman, said the police department and faculty were facilitating the evacuation process and guiding students to areas off campus.

She also was not happy with the fact that the warning was sent so late.

“Looking back at it now, 10 minutes really isn’t enough time,” she said.

Contact the desk editor at state@dailytarheel.com.