Published 2011-12-13T17:34:00Z”/>
Ben Mullin
<p class=”p1″>Last month, I looked up at the Student Services
Center, notepad and pen in hand, waiting for an explosion that
would never come.</p>
<p class=”p1″>As is often the case with breaking stories, the
motives and implications behind the news take longer to suss out
than the facts do, and the bomb threat called in two weeks ago is
no exception. The public still doesn’t know whodunnit or why, and
we may never know.</p>
<p class=”p1″>However, one uncertainty stands out to me among the
facts Published .</p>
<p class=”p1″>Katherine Hines, who received the threat at the
Wildcat Recreation Center, said she heard a deep, male voice say,
“There’s going to be a bomb at the Student Services Center.”</p>
<p class=”p1″>The caller, whoever he or she was, never specified a
time frame for the placement of the bomb beyond some point in the
future. The Student Services Center was cordoned off and searched
floor-by-floor by a bomb-sniffing dog, and nothing was found. But
if the threat was legitimate, the bomb could have been placed after
the search was conducted.</p>
<p class=”p1″>However unlikely, the threat could have referred to a
bomb in the building now, and we’d never know until it went
off.</p>
<p class=”p1″>The Student Services Center is open in spite of the
threat that administration felt merited investigation — but only a
one-time investi- gation, conducted within a few hours of the
ambiguous threat.</p>
<p class=”p1″>Classes were not canceled, the campus was not closed
and Student Services Center employees were moved to Meriam Library,
a building just a few hundred feet from the threatened
building.</p>
<p class=”p1″>University administration does not seem to believe
the threat will become a reality, because the Student Services
Center is unlocked and no additional surveillance has been posted
at or around the building.</p>
<p class=”p1″>They’re probably right, but more importantly, their
actions might prevent another bomb threat.</p>
<p class=”p1″>Despite the dangerous possibilities, Chico State
shouldn’t cancel classes just because some schmuck with a telephone
connection, a world of free time and exactly two brain cells to rub
together calls in a bomb threat.</p>
<p class=”p1″>Chico State can’t function fully without the Bell
Memorial Union and the Student Services Center, two of the busiest
and most vital buildings on campus.</p>
<p class=”p1″>At a time when our university is teetering on the
brink of financial collapse, we can’t afford to send employees home
for the indefinite future because of something that might
happen.</p>
<p class=”p1″>In short, Chico State can’t live in perpetual fear of
a bully.</p>
<p class=”p1″>Classes weren’t canceled that day, because to do so
would be to give the culprit exactly what he or she probably wanted
— to disrupt the uni- versity in some way or to make the students
afraid of what might happen. By investigating the threat
efficiently and otherwise running the university as usual, Chico
State set a strong precedent for these situations by standing up
to, rather than backing down from, the threat. Because the
university has demonstrated that it doesn’t let fear dictate its
decisions, Chico State is less likely to get threats, legitimate or
otherwise.</p>
<p class=”p1″>Tomorrow, an asteroid could come hurtling through the
sky and crash into the bench where I usually eat my lunch.</p>
<p class=”p1″>I’m still going to school.</p>
<p class=”p1″>And if I manage to extricate myself from the crater,
I’ll be there, notepad and pen in hand, waiting to tell the
story.</p>
<hr />
<p class=”p2″><strong>Ben Mullin can be reached at</strong></p>
<p class=”p2″><em>[email protected]</em></p>
