Historically Black colleges issue lockdown orders, cancel classes after receiving threats
Red stick, the. – On Thursday, a series of threats reported towards colleges and universities historically black across the United States led to locking orders, canceled courses and increased security.
Authorities have not developed the type of threats that have been made and no injury has been reported. The FBI told the Associated Press that he was taking “hoax threat calls” seriously and that there was “no information to indicate a credible threat”.
Although locking has since been raised, schools that have received threats continue to act with an abundance of caution. At a time of mass fire – and following a wave of violence on Wednesday and a wave of hoax calls on active shooters at the start of the school year – some universities have chosen to cancel lessons for the rest of the week and send the students home.
The American representative Troy Carter, a Louisiana democrat, described the threats of “reprehensible attacks” and said that any threat against the HBCU was “a threat to all of us”.
“These attacks cannot be tolerated, minimized or ignored,” he said. “They must be welcomed with rapid and decisive action.”
Southern University of Louisiana, which reported a “potential threat to campus safety” on the 8,200 students campus and put students under locking for about an hour. At the Alabama State University, which is near the city center of Montgomery and has an inscription of around 3,500, the students were sentenced to shelter in place while the police searched each building on the campus.
About two hours later, the university said it had received the “light” from the police. However, the school said that even if the “immediate threat had been resolved”, the students were invited to shelter in place in their dormitories and their classes were canceled for the rest of the day.
Clark Atlanta University in Georgia, Virginia State University, Hampton University in Virginia and the University of Bethune-Cookman in Florida has also reported threats.
Precautionary measures occurred at a time of increased concern on school campuses on violence following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in a university in Utah Valley and a shooting in a high school in Colorado.
Brewing incidents generally increase after violent events, putting schools at the front, said Don Beeler, CEO of TDR Technology Solutions, who follows calls and offers technology to prevent them. Safety measures that schools can implement after potential threats may be strengthened, such as cancellation of courses for a few days, instead of a single day.
“Everything that is happening next week will get an excessive reaction that you see normally,” said Beeler.
Other HBCUs who have not received threats have announced that they too tightened security.
The Southern Carolina State University forced anyone who came to the campus, to Orangeburg, to show an identity document with photo after the threats began to surface. Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia – which is close to a university that received a threat – issued locking on Thursday and said that it had amplified security measures.
At the start of the school year, at least a dozen university campuses received hoax calls for active shooters. The calls for realistic consonance, some of which had shots that could be heard in the background, prompted universities to emit locking with instructions to “run, hide, fight”.
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Cline reported Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The writers of the associated press Kimberly Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama; Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas; And Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina
