“I asked if this was an exercise, and they said, no, it was for real.” - Erik Christensen, Engineering Professor

A bomb threat called in from an off-campus payphone closed the Engineering and Mathematical Science Building for more than two hours last Wednesday.

The threat was the first the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has received since Oct. 4 last year when Holton, Johnston and Merrill Halls were evacuated.

However, the threat was not considered a “verifiable danger,” according to University Police Captain Michael Marzion, and didn’t generate too much concern among students.

If the threat had been considered a life threatening situation, it would have been the first chance for the university to test their new emergency text messaging system called the Safety Awareness for Everyone (S.A.F.E.) program.

The program is set up to text all signed up students as soon as an emergency arises. Originally, the program was intended to send texts for a list of threatening situations, but Marzion said the wording has been changed to send messages only “in the event of a life threatening crisis.”

He said around 3,000 students have signed up for the program so far, but the university is hoping to get more with its first official test scheduled for Nov.15.

In the case of this bomb threat, the university police received the threat third hand, but had to evacuate the building because of university policy. If the threat hadn’t been on university property, Marzion said the decision to evacuate the building wouldn’t have been so “black and white.”

University police said the call was received by the Milwaukee Police Department around 4:40 p.m. and evacuation of the building began four minutes later. By 5:02 p.m. police finished the first sweep, but didn’t completely clear the building until 7 p.m. with the help of the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Department’s bomb squad. The Milwaukee Police Department is still investigating the threat.

Engineering professor Erik Christensen was working in the building Wednesday when police ran through the building evacuating people.

“I asked if this was an exercise, and they said, no, it was for real,” Christensen said.

Almost an hour after he was evacuated, he knew class was cancelled but couldn’t go home until his wife picked him up because he couldn’t access his car parked in the underground structure.

Meanwhile, student reaction around the building was more one of excitement about missing a test or class than of concern for their safety.

Some students outside the immediate area of the EMS building had no idea a threat had been made or the building evacuated. On the other side of campus from EMS, Ryan Spreng, a UWM freshman, sat in the Union around 5:45 p.m. completely oblivious to the bomb threat less than a block away. When he was finally told about it nearly an hour after the building was evacuated, he said he wasn’t worried.

Likewise, Ramond Combs, another UWM student, assumed it was just a student not wanting to go to class.

“I think it’s just a kid playing a prank,” Combs said.

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