A series of bomb threats at three Ivy League colleges led authorities to evacuate parts of their campuses on Sunday before deeming the warnings not credible. The threats came just days after similar incidents occurred at two public universities in Ohio and at Yale University; those were also found to be false.
Around 2:15 p.m. on Sunday, Cornell University alerted students to evacuate four campus buildings, including the law school, after the police received calls that bombs were being placed in each location. Around 7:30 p.m., the university tweeted that the police had found no credible threats, and that it was safe to resume normal activities.
Around the same time on Sunday, Columbia University received bomb threats about three campus buildings, including a residence hall and the student center, and urged people to avoid the area. The threats were determined to be “not credible” by the police late Sunday afternoon. At 3:50 p.m., Brown University evacuated all buildings on its Main Green due to bomb threats; the all-clear came at 5:45 p.m.
Those threats occurred just two days after a non-emergency communications line in New Haven, Conn., received a call about a bomb that referred to locations on Yale’s campus, resulting in the evacuation of 10 buildings. And on Saturday, Ohio University and Miami University in Ohio received bomb threats that were later found to be spurious.
It is not clear if any of the threats are connected, and no suspects have been identified. Ronnell Higgins, the chief of police and director of public safety at Yale, said the institutions affected by the threats were in the process of forming a group of investigators to exchange information.
“It seems that it’s happening more frequently than in the past,” Higgins said. “This past weekend, given the calls to our other Ivy peers, it’s concerning. We’re looking to identify whoever’s responsible and to hold them accountable.”
In a statement emailed to The Chronicle, Joel M. Malina, Cornell’s vice president for university relations, confirmed that the university police were working with federal, state, and other campus law-enforcement agencies to “investigate the threat made to our campus in relation to similar threats made against other universities around the country.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation did not immediately respond to an email request for comment.
