Wait one moment!
Don’t start reading just yet!
Before you get too settled, take a look around for bombs. Check under your seat. Check under your neighbor’s seat. Go check the garbage cans and bathrooms – anyplace somebody may be hiding one. I’ll wait for you; the threat is real, and it’s all around us.
Or is that precisely what they want us to think?
Recently the University received two anonymous bomb threats, one of which resulted in the closure of Lillis Business Complex last Monday. The first “threat” was a message discovered two days prior, written on a bathroom in Esslinger Hall; it proclaimed that a bomb would go off in Lillis on Monday. After members of the Eugene Police Department and the Federal Protective Service searched the building, it was determined the threat was not credible. End of story, right?
Well, that’s what everyone thought until Tuesday. We woke up that morning to find e-mails notifying us of a second threat, made this time against six undisclosed buildings on campus. Like the first, this threat was quickly deemed not to be credible. No buildings were closed.
Now, I know this is a serious issue. There’s nothing funny about a situation as dangerous as a bomb threat, and when people are faced with one it’s always best to err on the side of caution. But there’s nothing funny about a fake bomb threat, either. I can’t help but wonder if whoever did this thought it was funny.
Or maybe the person is just lonely and wants to make friends by threatening to blow them up. Either way, when the second threat came to light early Tuesday, irritation and fear had gripped a sizable portion of the student body.
In the midst of these threats are questions that need to be asked. For instance, just what makes a threat credible? You’ve read the things people write in bathrooms; they’re rarely nice. Also, the threat against Lillis was found in Esslinger, some two blocks away. Why didn’t they make the threat in Lillis? Neither of these facts are grounds for ignoring a threat completely, but the circumstances suggest this wannabe bomber didn’t exactly paint the picture of a criminal mastermind. So why would they do it? What is there to gain from scaring people?
The threat closed Lillis last Monday – a week full of midterms. In all likelihood, someone with an exam and no conscience decided to take matters into his or her own hands. These were not isolated incidents either, on our campus or across the country. Threats were made against Lawrence Hall and the Knight Library in 2004, and back in 1970 someone actually went through with their plan, using dynamite to set off an explosion in Johnson Hall. In the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting, sporadic cases of student-instigated violence have been occurring all throughout the country. Just watch CNN for a while and you can hear about kids with guns and bomb threats to your heart’s content, if that’s what floats your boat.
All of this attention begs the question: What is the media’s role in situations like these? It’s the media’s job to inform the public, in order for people to make smart, informed decisions relating to their safety and personal well-being. But at a certain point, excessive media coverage emboldens unstable youths looking for their 15 minutes of fame. Is that what I’m doing right now? I hope not. If you’ve been considering blowing up a building and are reading this, take a minute to think about the ramifications of your actions. What’s so bad about your life that you have to take it out on other people?
In the time it takes you to read this, or check for bombs, or just about anything else, I could phone in a bomb threat to just about any building on campus myself. It doesn’t seem that hard; all it appears to take is a phone and the previously mentioned lack of a conscience. That’s the precise reason I (and all of you) don’t do it. No one’s perfect, but we’re all more or less sensible people. I guess if there’s something to be learned from all of this, it’s that this world is made up of two types of people: People with morals, such as yourselves, and idiots who make bomb threats. Don’t be an idiot. Don’t make bomb threats. It’s no way to make friends.
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