Since Friday before last, there have been four, FOUR bomb threats called into our school. The first one occurred on a Friday. The second one was called in specifically to the building all my classes are in. I was sitting in the hallway prior to class and two gentlemen swept through the building warning everyone to evacuate immediately. The third was called into, of all places, the Student Health Center (which actually alarmed everyone since a real bomb had just been found a few days before outside a women's clinic in downtown Austin). The fourth was just reported yesterday at the Student Activity Center -- which does hold classes. Each time the bomb threats shut the buildings down for at least four hours. On the day we had to leave the building I was in, I was supposed to take a test and turn in a paper. I circled the building repeatedly looking for teachers, worrying that if security reopened the building earlier than stated, my professors wouldn't believe me when I said, "But really, they told me to go home!" Hundreds of students stood in the drizzle looking for familiar faces, clearly unthreatened given the crowd's --including the Dean of Liberal Arts' -- 15' proximity to the building.
Sadly, most of us are used to and are fairly complacent about bomb threats. Anyone attending college in the last 40 years knows that bomb threats are always made around major test periods. As we approach the end of the semester, not only are there a lot of finals taking place, but most papers and projects are due. Those of us who are graduating feel put out because we just want to get this over with. I worry that the very last final I need to take is Thursday and, so far, half of the threats have occurred during TTh classes. We grumble and moan becuase 95% of our brains know full well that some moronic schmoe, unprepared for whatever class project/test, decided the best way to buy himself/herself time would be to call in a bomb threat.
In prior years, personnel usually quietly checked out the building for suspicious items without causing much upheaval. But since Virginia Tech, they cannot be too careful. I applaud their efforts to protect us.
What I previously thought of as juvenile, stupid, selfish behavior now feels to me like graves are being stomped on. In light of what has not just happened in VA, but in way too many other schools and offices, each time another threat pops up I am more and more disheartened by what is either criminal narcissism or frightening sociopathy.
I worry that so many of us are USED to the ridiculous levels of narcissism that our classmates and peers show that we are becoming too complacent. We are already so certain that each threat is nothing, so commonplace, that I imagine how easily we could all become a tragedy. And I worry that if we consider this type of behavior to be common, just what repercussions does that have for our psyche and our humanity?
