A lonesome backpack may draw attention; hang on to your things!
With the backpack left by the Post Office on East Campus last semester and the suspicious package left on West Campus a few weeks ago, bomb threats have been very much a reality this school year for APU students.
The suspicious package led to an evacuation of West Campus. Roads were blocked, cops surrounded the area, at least four helicopters hovered above and a bomb-removal robot was brought to remove the suspicious object. Sounds like a crazy day for Azusa.
Bomb threats on campus are taken seriously to make sure every person is safe. But from my observations, some students don’t seem to take these threats seriously, and that’s a problem.
Safety is a priority here on campus, but oddly enough, some students don’t seem to care. This all sounds like the story of the boy who cried wolf; sooner or later, if the threat of a bomb becomes a reality, well, you get the rest.
My guess is that students don’t pay attention to these threats because they are so busy with school that their minds are focused on upcoming homework, tests and papers.
In addition, nobody wants to be disrupted by a bomb threat due to a student being careless with his or her belongings. So what we, as APU students, can do to decrease the number of unnecessary threats is to be more careful with our possessions: write a reminder on our hands, set alarms on our phones or periodically check our notes in a planner as to not forget our belongings because then it would bring up questions that eventually will become a huge concern to campus safety.
While some students might take advantage of the situation because classes get cancelled, many others may not appreciate the disruption. Regardless, we have to take these threats seriously each time because you never know when it really will be a bomb or other threatening circumstance.
At the end of the day, we have to thank our campus safety officers for doing all they can to protect the students, staff, faculty and administration at APU.