Bomb Threat at HC

The President responded by stating “It was an email that targeted an individual faculty member so one of my first concerns was making sure that the faculty member was cared for and safe and we made sure we understood what needed to be done to protect faculty members as well as the campus. So we did a quick assessment with public safety. And there was a sense early on that the threat was relatively low. As you all probably know, there have been a lot of instances like this around the country, generally under the umbrella of swatting, but given the nature of that threat and given the level of disruption it could cause, we made the decision to evacuate many buildings and send people to Luth. After that point, the Worcester Fire Department, Worcester Police Department, as well as public safety came together to sweep the campus and make sure that there were no suspicious devices or packages. We had some additional foot patrol on campus as well.”

After explaining the details of the incident, President Rougeau went on to highlight the lessons learned. “I think what we took from this is: 1. We are entering into a period around the country, particularly because it’s an election year, where we have to be on a higher level of alert because these things are happening more frequently and we’re doing our best to make sure that we have protocols in place to deal with them and 2. We must use this incident to learn how we will respond in the future and to ensure that if we see anything that we can do better, we will make those improvements. We are constantly thinking about how to respond to incidents of this type. We are very focused on the safety of all members of our community but students will also have to understand that we live in a world of disruptions and we all have to work together to be alert, ask questions, report things that seem very unusual and to stay on top of alerts and protocols that we have to keep everyone safe.”