In the aftermath of the devastation at Virginia Tech, colleges continue to contend with threats, worries, and tasteless comments.
Mission College, in Santa Clara, Calif., was evacuated on Friday morning after a bomb threat was received, the Bay City News Service reported. A spokeswoman for the college said the campus police had made the decision to close, adding: “They thought the threat was credible enough.”
At Scott Community College’s campus in Bettendorf, Iowa, a threatening message scrawled on a bathroom stall prompted administrators to shut down classes on Friday morning. Campus officials told the Associated Press that they had already identified the author of the graffito, which read “VT Here Today.”
Officials at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania canceled classes Thursday afternoon after a suspicious-looking box was spotted outside an academic building, the Associated Press reported.
As it turned out, the box was nothing to worry about: A university employee had filled it with paper and placed it next to a trash can, the police later determined. “It was an honest mistake,” said Peter Gigliotti, a Shippensburg spokesman.
At California State University-Channel Islands, a first-year student was arrested on Thursday after a classmate noticed a disturbing post on her Facebook page, the Associated Press reported.
“Alisha Salazar is going on a … school shooting spree,” the message read. “Watch out kiddies, better hide under the desk!” Ms. Salazar is being held on $20,000 bail.
And in Missouri, Ozarks Technical Community College fired a part-time geography instructor on Thursday after some students said he had joked about being a suicide bomber. The instructor, whose name has not been released, told police officers he had made the comment “to lighten up the mood as the classroom was preparing for a test,” according to an Associated Press report.
Even if the botched joke had not come in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, it “still would have been cause for termination,” said Joel Doepker, a college spokesman. —Brock Read
