Photo by: Jacob Rokeach
At 9:35 a.m. last Tuesday, Sturm Hall was evacuated because of a phoned-in bomb threat.
Students attending class in Sturm Hall exited the building when they heard the sounds of what was believed to be a fire drill. In fact, the sounds signaled a bomb threat. Campus Safety, the Denver Fire Department and the Denver Police Department responded, soon followed by local TV vans.
Jackie Mulcahy, a freshman who was in Sturm Hall for a class, said, “Basically an alarm went off and the teacher told us to leave the building. We really thought it was a fire drill.”
According to Tyrone Mills, the associate director of Campus Safety, once everyone was out of the building, Campus Safety and emergency coordinators asked three faculty members to go back into the building to check for suspicious objects.
It is currently DU practice to allow employees to enter the building during a threat such as this to do a plain view search for suspicious objects.
No suspicious objects were identified and police permitted everyone to go back in.
However, in a subsequent e-mail to the DU faculty, Provost Gregg Kvistad said, “We must begin a review of the DU protocol that sends untrained and non-professional employees back into the building during an incident like the one we experienced. That will take some time. I fully anticipate that we will make a substantial change in that protocol.”
Kvistad went on to say, “I will not permit any untrained and non-professional DU employee to search evacuated buildings for potential hazardous objects. Even if such people volunteer, they will not be allowed to do that. We cannot risk the safety of our colleagues in this manner.”
Classes in the building were cancelled until noon, and students were asked to refrain from walking on the sidewalk directly in front of Sturm Hall until the danger was accurately assessed.
In the afternoon, classes resumed on the normal schedule.
Mills said, “There is currently no suspect.” However, if and when one is identified, the caller will face “some jail time as well as possibly a fine,” said Mills.
“Any kind of threat that threatens the lives of people is certainly taken very seriously by DU,” Mills said.
