Classes evacuated Bryan Hall yesterday morning after an unidentified perpetrator called in a bomb threat to University Police.
A female-sounding voice left a message on a police telephone line around 8:10 a.m. yesterday morning claiming that a bomb would explode in Bryan Hall Room 219 at noon, Police Capt. Michael Coleman said.
Police said they evacuated the building at 11 a.m. and reopened it at 1 p.m. when they felt the building was safe.
"As soon as [police] came in, they went from floor to floor and asked people to leave" the building, said Barbara Smith, assistant to the chairman of the English department.
But no bomb was discovered in the building, so Bryan Hall was reopened to students and faculty by 1 p.m.
"In this particular case, the building was evacuated until after the time [the bomb] was supposed to go off, but no bomb went off," so the building was reopened, Coleman said.
Several displaced professors moved to the Amphitheater to continue their classes.
The threat "was alarming, but it wasn't too disruptive," said Assoc. Prof. Susan Fraiman, whose ENTC 981B course, "Contemporary Women's Texts," meets in Bryan Hall from 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. "We just continued class outside."
Fraiman said she did not feel unsafe returning to the building.
"I gather the threat was quite specific, and they cleared the building an hour before and after [the bomb was scheduled to explode], so I didn't feel too worried being in the building later on," she said.
Calling in a bomb threat can be classified as either a Class 1 Misdemeanor or a Class 5 Felony, depending on the age of the caller.
"We can't make an assumption that the caller is a college student just because they called a college," Coleman said.
If the caller is over 15 years of age, she could face a maximum of 10 years in prison.
But if the caller is 15 years old or younger, the offense would be classified as a misdemeanor and she would face a maximum of one year in jail or a $2,500 fine.
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