A crowd of students surrounded the outside of Evangeline Hall Monday after the University ordered an evacuation over an anonymous bomb threat.
Gabriel Fuselier, a biological sciences junior who’s an RA for Evangeline Hall, said his supervisors contacted him five minutes after receiving a mass text from the University’s alarm system at 11:32 a.m.
“First we were to meet in the lobby of the building and collect to go over the protocol which then afterwards we were asked to sweep the floors, knock on all the doors to make sure everyone’s out and we told them that if they have a ride to calmly go off campus and if not then we’re setting up a shelter in the basement of Evangeline,” said Fuselier.
Students were sent to in the basement of Evangeline Hall, but were asked to move outside shortly afterward.
“The only hiccup was that the residents weren’t happy about — they had gotten set up in the basement and they were ready to do homework and have fun, just ride out the storm kind of like how Hurricane Issac happened and then when we asked them to move outside — well they can’t really do anything besides just stand around, talk and wait,” Fuselier said.
After several minutes had passed, authorities accompanied by a dog left the building and students entered the residence hall once again.
Cars flooded the streets of the campus as everyone tried to evacuate, and there were no authorities around to regulate the traffic within the intersections.
Some like Scott Gros, a marine biology freshman, decided against leaving as a result of the confusion on the highway.
“I wouldn’t, because I can’t back up my truck out of this,” said Gros, who decided to wait for the evacuation bus.
Residents were told an evacuation bus would come to escort students off campus, but Fuselier did not know where the buses would take them.
“In the event of an emergency protocol, they’re not allowed to tell us beforehand. Once we’re on the bus we will be notified of where we will be taken; this is because of the precaution of ongoing threats possible at the next location of where the buses are headed,” he said.
“We actually have a fairly good communication line with the state on this,” he said.
Because the bomb threat was also a threat to the Residence Assistants, they were allowed to leave campus if they wanted to, but Fuselier decided to stay on campus. He said he was worried, but has a “good bit of faith” in LSU PD to resolve the issue.
“There was no way I was gonna get off campus within the next hour and a half maybe because of the traffic, and whenever the question of the safety of the residents was come to question, I thought that it would be best to stay and make sure that there was someone who could have a calm head and answer the questions everyone else has,” he said.
The University has a record for alerting students of threats on campus, but Fuseli said he thinks LSUPD had reason to call for evacuation this time. While authorities usually dead with small threats at known locations, Fuseli said he thinks LSUPD might view this situation differently.
“I’m not an expert in this, but I have a feeling that if it’s small threat, but you don’t know where it is, there’s also the possibility of it being anywhere so you evacuate the entire campus,” he said.
