EDITORIAL: Bomb scare raises questions
The recent bomb threat has brought an explosion of questions onto IVCC’s campus.
High school students have taken their schools hostage by shooting their own students, planting bombs, and the like. In college, a different set of behaviors would be expected. Unfortunately for IVCC, we let the girl who cried bomb, win. Juvenile behavior was showcased in an adult institution.
Yes, there are some bad apples out there; however, they should’ve dropped out of organized education before high school ended, or at their graduation. Such behavior shouldn’t be tolerated by the powers that be at IVCC.
Some students that had been hastily evacuated said that they were told to leave their bags and other belongings behind by the janitorial staff, leaving the students stranded in the parking lots for over three hours. After explosive devices were found in duffel bags and backpacks at Columbine High School in Colorado, asking students to leave their belongings behind seems logical enough, though Frank Zeller, vice president of business affairs says that whoever had told the students not to take their belongings was wrong.
If you’re sending people into a situation as delicate as a bomb threat, don’t you think you’d have a set plan of operations?
According to Oglesby police chief Tom Martin, janitors and police searched the building in an hour and a half. While Martin said the search went smoothly, he thought changes are needed in IVCC’s evacuation procedure.
Is an hour and a half really long enough to search the entire building?
Were they sprinting through every room, using infrared vision to check every nook and cranny? Did they really check everything from the garbage cans to the toilet paper dispensers for explosive devices or do they believe the James Bond movies that only show bombs as having red blinking lights and loud ticking noises?