When Bomb Threats Are Racially Motivated
In February, bomb threats rippled through more than 50 HBCUs across the country. An FBI investigation found racial motivations behind the threats and identified six minors as persons of interest. The bureau is still investigating the cases.
Some HBCUs had to respond to numerous unfounded bomb threats. The effort eats away at university resources and takes a toll on the campus community’s mental health, HBCU administrators say. And though HBCU leaders offered messages of resilience in the wake of the threats, many institutions were shaken by the concerning pattern.
Last month, at the National HBCU Week Conference, in Washington, D.C., I ran into Hamed Negron-Perez, program manager for the U.S. Department of Education’s Project SERV, a FEMA program that stands for School Emergency Response to Violence.
He told me that Project SERV was established to provide education-related services to schools where the learning environment had been disrupted by violent or traumatic crises. Funding from Project SERV has been granted to schools reeling from the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and attacks like the 1999 Columbine High School shooting. In March, the grant program was expanded to support HBCUs and other institutions that had been roiled by bomb threats.
“We at the Department of Education recognize how these threats evoke a painful history of violence against Black Americans in this country that is especially traumatizing to HBCU students, faculty, and staff,” said Miguel Cardona, U.S. secretary of education, in a news release.
(Back in February, I reported on the troubling history of bomb threats at HBCUs, dating back to 1960, when someone called in a similar threat at Fisk University, in Nashville, Tenn., just before the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was scheduled to speak there.)
So far, five historically Black institutions have been awarded Project SERV grants: Tougaloo College, in Mississippi; Fayetteville State University, in North Carolina; Coppin State University, in Maryland; Fisk University, in Tennessee; and the Southern University Law Center, in Louisana.
Here’s how two of those institutions are using the money.
Reassessing Protocols
The alarm on February 22 frightened Fayetteville State’s students, faculty, and staff and disrupted classroom instruction. It alerted them to a bomb threat. The residential campus community was told to shelter in place. Campus operations were suspended until the campus police could further investigate the threat. The campus police then worked alongside city officials, the state police, and the FBI to surveil the area.
“No doubt this created significant concern among our students, parents, faculty, staff, and surrounding community about their safety and security,” says Darrell T. Allison, chancellor of Fayetteville State.
Many HBCUs deployed similar protocols after the February threats — protocols they hadn’t used in years.
HBCU administrators say that although they had the the infrastructure to protect themselves against the threats, their resources were exhausted in the process. In response to the bomb threat, Fayetteville State increased campus police patrols and called in city police officers for additional help. The university extended work schedules for critical employees, including the campus police, communications officials, and administrators.. The university will use its over-$80,000 grant to reimburse funds that were exhausted by having to pay employees for overtime. It will also purchase a bomb-sniffing dog (which the university had to rent at the time of the initial threat).
Similarly, with its $130,000 grant, Coppin State University will develop a marketing campaign to promote campus-safety awareness and better connect students with the university’s public-safety team. The university will also beef up emotional-support training for campus police officers who may be the first to encounter someone needing mental-health support.
The Mental-Health Toll
Institutions of higher learning are supposed to be safe places, emotionally, physically, and psychologically, says Stephan T. Moore, vice president for enrollment management and student affairs at Coppin State. But a bomb threat disrupts that sense of safety.
“When anyone impedes the operation of that environment, it causes you to wonder why,” Moore said. “Why us, as a historically Black college and university, that was created on the foundation to provide spaces for all individuals to be able to further their education in an environment where they could feel free?”
In the wake of the bomb threats, students have expressed an increased toll on their mental health. Coppin State will use part of its Project SERV grant to hire an additional full-time psychologist to meet the demand for individual and group counseling in the campus counseling center.
Meanwhile, for the 30 percent of Fayetteville State’s student population who are on active duty, or military veterans, a bomb-threat alert could trigger a negative response. After the threat, communications officials fielded emails from veterans seeking an alternative to the provocative alarms that rang out as part of the institution’s safety protocol. The college typically deployed a big voice box that warned the entire campus to shelter in place. Now, university communications officials are meeting with the campus police department and the chancellor to determine how campus-safety communication could be more sensitive to students who struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Increased awareness about the needs of their students is “one of the good things that came out of what could have been a tragic event,” said Joy Cook, Fayetteville State’s associate vice chancellor for strategic communication and chief communication officer.
A Continuing Threat
In the meantime, HBCU leaders remain concerned that the threats will keep coming and are asking for more support.
On October 1, the Bipartisan Congressional HBCU Caucus wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice asking for better regular communication regarding the FBI’s investigation and more communication and guidance on related grant programs for smaller HBCUs and those with less experience applying for federal grants.
“We are concerned that the ongoing nature of these threats may embolden others who wish to do harm to these schools and their students,” members of the HBCU Caucus wrote.
