How did you feel about the bomb threat and the blackout on campus?
Did those events change your overall opinion about the safety on campus?
Here’s What You Said:
Anthony Ortiz,Sophomore
Threat: “I wasn’t here, but my friend told me. I know some campuses are starting to do a texting notification, but at NEIU students don’t know until after the fact from e-mail. That didn’t really help. I know at Virginia Tech, there was a student who killed some of his fellow students. I know it would take up so much time, but at least do something. We’re not up to security anyways. There’s a cop or two on campus, but for how many students? If there were more of a presence, maybe students would be discouraged from violent behavior.”
Campus: “Yeah, I don’t like it. Don’t worry about parties so much…go around and provide security for students.”
Evan Chears,NEIU Graduate
Threat: “I’m not really sure how I feel about it. I wasn’t here when it happened, and I don’t know where or how they received their information. It just seems a little screwy. It’s the second time a bomb threat has happened since six months ago. I have no idea why anyone would want to bomb anything. Personally, it’s a little bizarre.”
Campus: “Not entirely. Since nothing too serious has happened so far, not that it should be the thing that causes me to think differently. Any sort of disturbance that has happened that I know of is theft of various kinds and things like that. The bomb threat seemed a little fishy to me, so it doesn’t affect me that much.”
Dragan Mackovic,Senior
Threat: “For the bomb threat, I wasn’t present at the library at that point, but they handled it pretty well. The police came quickly and searched everything. I think that they should be more careful about it though…be more concerned later on what might happen.”
“As far as the blackout, I was surprised they kept us here for two hours, especially the science building, where I have most of my classes. It gets really dark and a lot of people could get hurt or assaulted. Not that anything happened, but you never know what might happen.”
Campus: “Not so much because I’ve been here for a very long time and nothing like that has happened before, but as I said, I think that the blackout could have been taken care of a little quicker and the police could have told us what was happening, since everyone was scattered around searching for information.”
Sokhom Cheng, Sophomore
Threat: “I think the bomb threat was unusual. There are crazy people out there that want to put students in fear with worries. With the blackout, it’s common and unexpected.”
Campus: “With blackout, not so much, since it’s technical difficulty but the bomb threat is a little scary. You never know what a stranger would do in the school. I’m sure the police should take precautions on people who trespass on school.”
Lena Arshawer,Senior
Threat: “With the bomb threat, I was a little concerned that they didn’t send us home for safety. Otherwise, if they didn’t think it was that serious, then I guess it was okay for school to resume.”
“As for the power outage, it took a little long for them to announce to let us go home. It wasn’t so bad. It was pretty organized. They had all of us in a bright area and all the bathrooms were locked for safety.”
Campus: “I still think for a bomb threat, it’s a bit serious, so they should have sent us home. You never know. They might take it as joke, but you can’t take those risks.”
Heather Dean,Junior
Threat: “For the bomb threat I wasn’t actually at school at the time. I didn’t know about it until someone told me about it, so it didn’t really affect me.”
“For the blackout, I thought it was really odd on why the entire school would lose power and that it was odd that they didn’t do anything about it. We all sat in the dark for two hours, until we got to go home. I was weirded out that there was no action done but I didn’t mind.”
Campus: “After the bomb threat happened, I thought what I heard about it, the threat was taken care of pretty well. They sent e-mails and told everyone about it. Seems like they got people in there in the situation and assess it. As far as management of things that go on pertaining to the blackout, it doesn’t make me feel too confident about how everything is taken care of at school. I’m a little weary of the safety. If there was a fire, I wonder if they would be able to fix it, since it was so difficult to fix the blackout problem. Or, if they were able to find out about it because the whole school was without electricity for a while.”
Colette Lamont,Sophomore
Threat: “Honestly, I had no idea since I was arriving on campus when I heard about the bomb threat. I didn’t have a reaction on what was going on until later. That’s what I don’t like about this school…we don’t really know what’s happening until a couple days after, so if something goes down on campus, we’re pretty much screwed…like the blackout. I only heard about that from a friend and later we found that campus was officially closed from the Web site. Other than that, the school is not organized when it comes to safety rules.”
Campus: “I didn’t really think it was great to begin with. There’s no metal detectors, no communication among students, so anything could happen here.”
Adrianna Amato, Sophomore
Threat: “The blackout was really weird, since no one said anything about it. I walked around for half and hour and I didn’t know what was going on. I saw a sign at the cashier’s office and that’s how I found out. I didn’t get an e-mail about classes being cancelled until it was almost 3 o’clock, so was pretty bad.” Campus: “Not really. I’m not really scared and people make threats all the time. If it’s going to happen, then it’s going to happen and there’s nothing that I can do about it.”
Matt Shapiro, Sophomore
Threat: “I had no idea there a bomb threat. As for the power outage, it was an inconvenience because I didn’t know about until I came to campus. Other than that, I was happy to have the day off.”
Campus: “No bomb went off, so no.”
Amber Leah Nordling,Senior
Threat: “I didn’t really give it much thought, but I thought it was was kind of funny that someone would threaten to bomb the library. It’s a little frivolous to me. I just thought it was some asshole being a dork. I wasn’t worried in the least. I thought it was comical.”
Campus: “No. I’ve always felt safe on campus and I still do.”