When you think of the phrase “starting off the new year with a bang,” you think of it as an expression of doing something unique, different or crazy. You don’t really expect something to actually explode, at least you hope not. At the beginning of the Spring ’09 semester, a man walked into the library stating that a friend of his was going to walk in the building and “blow it up”. NEIU police were called and apprehended the man. Yet, because of this, the entire library building had to be evacuated. It actually turned out that the man’s threats weren’t genuine, and he had apparently also been drinking.
Still, a bomb threat is obviously no joke at all, and many students on campus at the time of the incident didn’t know what was going on until the official e-mail was sent out. So, should more have been done? This is not a question of implementing some new guidebook or employing a group of people whose job is specifically to handle campus-wide notifications; our school already has a guidebook that’s very helpful and Public Safety can do the notifications themselves.
Should more of the campus have been evacuated? Perhaps neighboring buildings such as the Fine Arts Building, the B Building or the Science Building? In the case of a bomb threat, you never really know whether it’s genuine or not, and in the cases where it is genuine, what kind of bomb it is. If by any chance there was a bomb on campus, and it was an air borne chemical threat, what’s to stop those dangerous chemicals from being blown onto another part of campus where unaware students might also be exposed?
Granted, there’s the factor of possibly spreading panic to the general student body. This would be counter-productive to authorities, especially during times of crisis, when it would be ideal for the authorities to avoid mistakes. Imagine how this might occur, that is, if the entire school was informed of an apparent bomb threat on campus. In fact, this question should be posed to you, the reader: What would you do if you were informed of a bomb threat on campus? Would you move to the safest location on campus, or would you forget about your schoolwork and just go home?
After thinking this over, the mind races with scenarios of what could happen. Chances are that most people would try to get away from the threat as quickly as possible, and with so many people leaving class and urgently looking for a safe way out, the confusion could easily conceal anyone who has bad intentions. It’s understandable when you look at the authorities’ point of view.
If there were a bomb threat called in, it would be easier to prevent a worst-case scenario if there were less people walking around. Less confusion can save lives; so this isn’t a jab at the police, nor at the schools policies and guidelines. Though, after saying that, it’s not as if the entire faculty and student body at NEIU would run around screaming, “BOMB! SAVE YOURSELVES!” No, the people here are better than that.
If people thought more should have been done on that day in January, perhaps things could change and more precautions could be taken in the future. Quicker campus-wide notices that are performed in a calm and collective manner, for instance. Maybe even evacuating neighboring buildings, just in case the worst should happen. In any case, the worst did not happen and no one was hurt. But with every incident that takes place, there are always questions that run through a person’s mind, such as what could happen and what can be done to prevent that dreaded worst-case scenario.