After receiving an anonymous threat that four pipe bombs had been left on the campus Monday, officials at the University of Iowa rushed to warn students, faculty, and employees. Unfortunately, the e-mail system didn’t rush along with them.
Mass e-mail messages about the threat, which were sent to about 45,000 people affiliated with the institution, took between 90 minutes and two hours to arrive, university officials told the Iowa City Press-Citizen. That’s clearly “not ideal,” as an Iowa spokesman put it, so the university is working to start a rapid-alert system that would send emergency messages to people’s cellphones, home phones, and e-mail accounts.
So far, nothing has come of the bomb scare. But campus investigators are now trying to figure out who sent the threatening e-mail message that kept the university on edge. —Brock Read
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