I was right in the middle of Bryan Chung’s voice lesson this afternoon – about 1:40 – when there was a spirited knock on the door and then a complete stranger stuck his head in and said “I’m sorry, but we are evacuating the building.”
Huh?
There was something about the guy’s manner that made it seem like it was not a perilous situation of any kind- but on the other hand, he was firm and brisk enough that I didn’t even think about objecting or of even asking for clarification. And even as I was putting on my coat and grabbing my backpack, I realized immediately what the situation almost certainly was. . . In about an hour and a half, a noteworthy speaker was going to be speaking in Siebert Chapel – a leading figure in the nation of Islam. The campus was thick with security personnel beyond Carthage’s own staff. . . I had run into several of them earlier in the day. . . and they were obviously not there to provide window dressing. You could just tell that they were checking out the campus with utmost seriousness, intent on ensuring that our special guest would be safe.
I was told by a student who was helping out with the event that the evacuation of my building was because a suspicious looking package was found in Siebert; I never heard any confirmation of that from a more official source- and it seems like such a thing would necessitate an even more complete and longer evacuation than what we experienced. My own theory is that they wanted to clear the building just to know that there wasn’t somebody lurking in some dark corner, waiting in hiding. At any rate, we were outside no longer than ten minutes (more like six or seven) before we were allowed back in to resume whatever we were doing. By the way, Mark Petering was outside with his oral skills class, and they kept on with whatever they had been singing before they were interrupted, and the sound of their singing was oddly reassuring. ( And when the “all clear” was given and students were heading back into the building, one of my voice students in the class- Justin Pratt – insisted that he had been profoundly traumatized by the incident and needed to go to the counselor’s office rather than return to class. It’s amazing how proficient these freshmen are at good old fashioned BS !)
It turned out to be no big deal – and the Islamic speaker was able to give his presentation without incident or disruption – but I have to confess that there was something rather disconcerting about the whole thing. Maybe it’s because tomorrow is the anniversary of the Virginia Tech shooting – an incident which revealed just how vulnerable the typical college campus is. Such places are meant to be places of openness – because how does real learning happen without it? Anyway, I can only hope that this False Alarm will be the closest that Carthage ever comes to experiencing violence of this kind any time soon.
pictured: Some of the students and staff from the Johnson Arts Center which was evacuated for a few minutes early this past afternoon. There was not much at all in the way of horseplay out there- our students took this quite seriously. At least the weather was beautiful with clear skies and comfortable temps; this so easily could have occurred on one of our many cruumy days (meterologically speaking, of course) and standing in the rain would have been so much worse than what ultimately happened.