8 HBCUS RECEIVE BOMB THREATS, SPURRING EVACUATIONS, LOCKDOWNS
At least eight historically Black colleges and universities received bomb threats Tuesday, school officials said, triggering abrupt evacuations of students and employees.
Spelman College, the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, Florida Memorial University, Howard University, Norfolk State University, North Carolina Central University, Prairie View A&M University in Texas and Xavier University of
Louisiana reported bomb threats. No explosions occurred.
Multiple schools ordered evacuations or lockdowns and alerted local law enforcement. It was not immediately clear whether the threats were connected or whether they were racially motivated. By early Wednesday, all of the schools had released all-clear notices to their communities.
In many cases, the threats arrived in the midst of winter break, or to campuses much emptier than usual as school officials sought to keep people safe amid the pandemic.
“Although the threat was unfounded we ask that everyone remains vigilant,” a statement from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff said, adding that the full student body hadn’t yet returned from the holiday break but those who were there were relocated off campus.
The threats come after three Ivy League schools received similar threats in November and TikTok posts hinting at potential school shootings prompted a dozen school districts across the country to tighten security last month. Law enforcement officials later determined those threats were not credible.
Nationally, the frequency of bomb threats has declined in the past two years, according to the latest tallies disclosed by a federal government data center. But the number of actual bombings has risen — a trend that forces schools to take threats more seriously.
In 2020, the most recent year for which the data center has published tallies, officials said 818 bomb threats had been documented. That figure was about a 20 percent drop from the previous year and about half of the 1,627 threats received in 2018.