<p>I don’t think an institution has any choice but to evacuate if someone makes a bomb threat. That said, I have many dear friends on campus right now, and I am not at all worried that they are in danger.</p>
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<p>So argy, you think taking precautions is just about administrators liking to play General? Frankly, that’s not a very mature perspective. </p>
<p>“We have lives to get on with”. Well, yes. Having lives is pretty much the whole point. </p>
<p>“farce of false confirmed reports piled up”. Piling up reports is certainly a way to convince the police and school administrators that all is safe, right?</p>
<p>As Hanna says, even if you think the bomb threat is a hoax, you have to treat it as real and act accordingly. That’s just plain old common sense.</p>
<p>I am sure it was a finals week hoax, but the university really had no choice but to do what they did. </p>
<p>At my college, we could take final exams at our convenience any time during finals week. So I could be taking the same exact test as my best friend took yesterday. Believe it or not, I never saw anyone abuse the privilege. I’m surprised to hear Harvard doesn’t have one.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure that in the classes affected, students had the choice of either taking the exam or waiving it and settling for their current grade. In my son’s math class, they had the option of taking the exam, but the higher grade - either the exam grade or the course grade will be used. The exam was delayed several hours because the actual tests were locked away in the science center and the TA’s couldn’t access the building. They ended up reprinting the exam.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s fear of litigation that is causing these reactions–it’s the fear of being the person who ignored a threat that turned out to be real. Nobody wants to be that person. And enough real things have happened in the last few years that people are sensitized. What worries me is this: can we ever turn the level of alert back, even if time passes without incident?</p>
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It’s a lot of work to nurture a culture where an honor code works. It was one of the things my oldest liked best about Caltech. Interestingly back when my mother was at Radcliffe and my Dad was at Harvard they didn’t take exams together because Radcliffe had an honor code and took exams unproctored and Harvard didn’t trust their students and had proctors.</p>
<p>argbargy, you continue to seem not to understand type I and type II error. If you don’t know what the reality is (is there a bomb, or not) you have two choices. You can evacuate, which means that you will have “overreacted” when there turns out not to be a bomb, and you’ve inconvenienced the student body and yada yada. Or, you can NOT evacuate, take your chances, and be the one responsible for death / injury if indeed it turns out to be true. If there is a credible threat, what makes you so sanguine that you, indeed, can determine whether it’s real or not? Most normal people would consider the downside of being the one whose inaction led to injury a worse outcome than the person whose action led to everyone being inconvenienced. Most normal people consider an inconvenience a lesser harm than injury / death. </p>
<p>This is a college president’s worst nightmare - some kind of gun threat / bomb threat / whatever on campus - and don’t forget that this is in the shadow of what happened with the Boston Marathon. I don’t envy the people who have to make such decisions, and I certainly am not so arrogant as to pretend that I know better. How incredibly arrogant to predict hindsight.</p>
<p>Well that didn’t take long. The FBI has identified the student who emailed the bomb threat. </p>
<p>This student must not know much about computers. As in nothing. What a bozo. I imagine that the exam he missed because of the bomb threat isn’t the only exam he no longer has to worry about.</p>
<p>There’s a former CCer that I still talk to who had classes with the guy arrested at Harvard. She thinks he was in the middle of a mental break down… which makes a lot of sense. I don’t think anyone in their right mind is going to get a test cancelled and then face years in prison. Just doesn’t make sense.</p>
<p>On the one hand, this guy caused major hassles. On the other hand, it’s quite sad. But the fact is that every semester at Harvard (or any U), there is a student stretched beyond his limits who is not ready for finals. They just can’t be doing this…</p>
<p>His name is now emblazoned permanently on the internet, associated with this incident. He’s got a tough road ahead; I hope he gets help.</p>
<p>I had been surprised that the threat was via email, which seemed rather dumb as it is so traceable. But those who do these sorts of things are not thinking in a sane or logical fashion usually.</p>
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<p>I completely agree and you expressed it well. </p>
<p>argbargy’s thinking on this reminds me a little of an experience from years ago, that wasn’t as serious as the one on this thread. I was in high school and with my parents at a high rise hotel to attend my brother’s college graduation. The fire alarm went off in the hotel and I wanted to evacuate down the stairs and my parents wanted to ignore the alarm. They refused to go down the stairs and so I chose to on my own. It did not turn out to be a fire. For years, all the way until I was 50 years old, my mother would tell this story to others (inc. my own kids) about how I left them to flee the building and sorta made fun of me for doing so. It would not be a funny story, however, had there truly been a fire. In such situations, how is anyone to know for sure at first? Not possible. I’d rather heed warnings of this sort, even if inconvenienced when it isn’t the real thing, and just be grateful it is not the real thing. Much better than the other type of scenario of when it is real, but ignored.</p>