Law enforcement officials gave the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill the all-clear at 5 a.m. Monday after a bomb threat was made, and the origin of the threat is still being investigated, according to The Daily Tar Heel.
The Orange County Central 911 dispatcher at the Department of Public Safety received a call around 9 p.m. Sunday from a man who claimed to be in possession of an explosive device near the Pit, the heart of UNC's campus. The area, which includes the Student Union, Davis Library and Undergraduate Library, was evacuated at about 9:15 p.m. while the Department of Public Safety investigated the situation.
Students who were forced to leave the buildings said they were not informed of the circumstances surrounding the evacuation. Alert Carolina-UNC's emergency alert Web site-was updated just before 11 p.m.-almost two hours after the initial threat was made. Those who had opted-in to the Alert Carolina notification system received text messages at about 11:45 p.m., The Daily Tar Heel reported Monday morning.
UNC officials sent an e-mail to students Monday right before noon in response to questions regarding the University's protocol on alerting students during emergency situations. The University's siren and text message systems are only activated in cases of "imminent threat" posed by a gunman, a chemical hazard or a tornado, the e-mail stated.
"In [Monday night's] case, our Public Safety officers focused first-as they should-on responding to the situation and protecting the people who might have been at risk," Nancy Davis, UNC's associate vice chancellor for university relations, wrote in an e-mail to The Chronicle.
The University issued an alert as soon as the "essential work was done" of securing the area and evacuating nearby buildings, she added.
During emergency situations, safely transferring students to neutral areas is the priority, Randy Young, spokesperson for UNC's Department of Public Safety, wrote in an e-mail Monday. Communicating the need to relocate could also result in fear or panic, he added.
"In some scenarios, attempts to fully explain to large numbers in transit the details related to a threat would diminish officers' capability to attend to their priority-efficiently escorting a population to safety," Young said. "This is carried out by officers who are confident in the knowledge that information will be provided to students/staff/faculty by means such as the appropriate components of the Alert Carolina system."
If the event occurred on Duke's campus, however, the situation may have been handled differently, Dean of Students Sue Wasiolek said.
"Our goal is to try to make our emergency response as transparent as we deem safe and appropriate at the time," she said. "I'm not going to judge how UNC handled it, but we would convene the appropriate people and make those decisions at the time."
Although such threats are handled on a case-by-case bais, Wasiolek said Duke would make the information available as quickly and as thoroughly as the situation warrants.
Like UNC, DukeALERT's opt-in text messaging and siren system also is activated in the same three instances. Duke's system debuted this past July.
The last bomb threat at Duke took place in April 2007 for Bell Tower Dormitory and a nonexistant building. Bell Tower was not evacuated and the threat was discredited.
Depending on the situation, Duke has evacuation plans that range from spilling over to adjacent buildings to sending students to UNC, Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta said.
"There's no cookbook for these things-it depends on the place, the perceived quality of the threat," Moneta said. "Bomb threats often come through Duke Police. They really have a well-honed capacity to evaluate the credibility of the threat, and that's the first line of analysis."
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.