Bomb threat: late notice causes student concern

Campus Public Safety officers found two bomb threat notes in an undisclosed location Thursday morning.

The threat was immediately assessed, the university was searched, and nothing was found.

The decision was made not to evacuate campus after Campus Public Safety and the Campus Incident Response Team consulted with the Portland Police Bureau and the FBI, said Joan Barnes, assistant vice president for University Communications.

Three hours after the bomb threats were discovered at 9 a.m., the university sent a mass e-mail to students, staff and faculty informing them of the threat. Some students and staff are criticizing this decision.

“I only hope that they were 100 percent certain that we weren’t in danger,” said Rudy Soto, president of Associated Students of Portland State University.

Portland State officials would not comment on where the notes were posted and what buildings were threatened, saying only that the threats were found in a public place.

“It was the feeling of the incident command team that that information would not be helpful to the campus,” Barnes said.

Some students said they saw multiple Campus Public Safety officers and a Portland police officer standing outside Smith Memorial Student Union shortly after the notes were found.

Lindsay Desrochers, vice president for Finance and Administration and commander for the Campus Incident Response Team, said the incident response process went smoothly.

“What you do is you assess the risk as quickly as you can, and we did assess the risk,” Desrochers said.

The notes were found just after 9 a.m., and the buildings were searched after that, Barnes said. An e-mail statement was sent at about 11:40 p.m. to university staff and students, she said.

The Vanguard did not receive an e-mail about the threat until 2:23 p.m., and other students, including Soto, said they did not get an e-mail until about that same time.

Hillary Paasch, a New Student Program assistant, said she would have liked to have been notified soon after the threats were found so that she could have made up her own mind as to whether or not she wanted to leave campus. She also questions the thoroughness of the bomb search.

“We never saw anyone searching our officers or our building,” she said. “I just am concerned about it. I totally understand the need to not cause a big campus-wide panic. On the other hand, no one in our office even got the e-mail.”

The Campus Public Safety office refused to comment about the threats.

-Additional reporting by David Holley