Baton RougeLouisiana – A series of reported threats to black colleges and universities in U.S. history on Thursday led to lockdown orders, canceling courses and enhanced security.
Authorities did not specify the type of threat posed or reported any harm. The FBI told the Associated Press that they are taking “serious scam threat appeals and “no information indicates a reliable threat.”
Although the lockdown has been lifted, threatened schools are still pursuing caution. In an era of mass shootings – violence occurred Wednesday and a series of fraudsters about active shooters at the start of the school year – some universities chose to cancel classes for the rest of the week and send students home.
U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, Democrat of Louisiana, called the threat a “reprehensible attack” and said any threat posed to HBCUS is a “threat to all of us.”
“These attacks cannot be tolerated, minimized or ignored,” he said. “Speed and decisive action must be taken.”
Southern University in Louisiana reported “potential threats to campus safety” on the campus of 8,200 students and placed students in lockdown for about an hour. At Alabama State University, near downtown Montgomery, which enrolls about 3,500 people, students were ordered to be on the scene when police searched every building on the campus.
About two hours later, the university said it had received “full clarity” from police. But the school said that despite “the threat was resolved immediately”, students were asked to shelter in their dormitories and that classes were cancelled for the rest of the day.
Georgia, Virginia State University, Clark Atlanta University of Hampton University in Virginia and Florida Baibai-Cookman University also reported threats.
The precautions were the assassination of Utah Valley conservative activist Charlie Kirk as school campuses feared violence and a shooting at a Colorado high school.
Don Beeler, CEO of TDR Technology Solutions, said bragging incidents often increase after violence, putting schools on the edge. The security measures that schools may take may exacerbate potential threats, such as canceling classes for a few days, rather than just one day.
“Everything that happens next week will produce an overreaction than you normally see,” Beeler said.
Other unthreatened HBCUs announced that they are also strengthening security.
South Carolina State University is asking anyone who comes to Orangeburg campus to show a photo ID after the threat begins to surface. Spelman College, a university whose neighbors are indeed threatened, in Atlanta, Georgia, released a lockdown Thursday and said security measures are being stepped up.
At the beginning of the school year, at least a dozen college campuses received scams about active shooters. The sounding realistic phone calls, some of which can be heard in the background, prompting the university to issue a lockdown, indicating “running, hiding, fighting.”
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Cline Report Baton RougeLouisiana. Associated Press writer Kimberly Chandler is in Montgomery, Alabama; Heather Hollingsworth is in Kansas mission; and Jeffrey Collins of Columbia, South Carolina
