Many Lafollette Complex residents are unhappy with the way police agencies and Ball State University handled the bomb threat to the area early Saturday morning.
Freshman Asia Jureczko said she was in her room and yelled down to police, asking them what was happening. She said they told her to stay in her room and wouldn't tell her what was happening.
"I think it was handled wrong - they should have sent out a text message and let people know," she said.
Tony Proudfoot, associate vice president for marketing and communications, said the university has two reasons for sendingemergency alert messages. He said they were meant to communicate official information and raise awareness about situations and mitigate any rumors. They also recommend specific actions to be taken by students, faculty and staff to increase their safety.
Since no specific actions could have improved safety during the bomb threat, Proudfoot said, an emergency alert message was unnecessary. He said students weren't notified about the situation because doing sowouldn't increase their safety.
University Police Department and Delaware County Bomb Squad managed the scene, with Muncie Police and the Muncie Fire Department also responding. UPD and the bomb squad collaborated on the decisions made throughout the threat.
The bomb squad swept the scene and determined the threat to be false, Proudfoot said.
Sophomore and LaFollette resident Katie Phillips said people were worried and surprised they never got a text message alert.
"The e-mail they sent out said they thoroughly searched the building. I don't see how they did considering I was never woken up and neither was anyone else," she said.
UPD Cpl. Craig Hodson said police used dogs to search LaFollette floor by floor but couldn't release any specifics about protocol for safety issues.
Proudfoot said although evacuation seems like the most logical course of action, anonymous bomb threats can lead to other threats. Some have been used to draw people out into an open area where they would bevulnerable to attack, he said. Police used standard protocol to handle the situation and it determined evacuation wasn't the safest action, he said.
"Decisions are made driven by what will keep the population the most safe," he said.
Police determined that if the threat was real, the bomb would have to be small and mobile and would cause most damage if detonated in an open area, Proudfoot said. If it exploded in a building, however, itwouldn't be as big of a threat because LaFollette provided protection from the blast. LaFollette Field was evacuated because the blast would cause more damage in an open area, he said.
Director of Public Safety Gene Burton could not be reached for comment on specifics of how the threat was called in.
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