Tigers and Hurricanes and Bomb Threats, Oh My!

Hello, all--

Can some one please explain to me what the hell is happening in Baton Rouge?

I understand that hurricanes are an inevitable events of nature and I will be dealing with them for the remainder of my time at LSU.

However, today I was reminded that inevitable events of nature are not the only things one has to deal with in higher education.

LSU received a bomb threat today and at 11:38am a fellow grad student popped her head in the office to tell me that we had to evacuate campus. If not for her, I most likely would have sat in my office until I received the text message/email notification to evacuate 1 hour later.  Luckily for me, I had finished eating my lunch and was not in mid hot-pocket.  I quickly packed up my things hopped into a different friend's car parked out front and got a lift to parking lot.

Once I was in my car and officially evacuating by vehicle the real fun began.  Almost two hours after closing my office door I was opening the door to my apartment.  To really hit this home,  driving two hours can get me half way to Houston from here or from Houston to College Station.

Now, don't get me wrong, I am very hopeful that the bomb threat is just a some dumb kid playing off of the bomb threats at NDSU and UT and that there is no real threat.  With that hope in mind, traffic is the least of the problems a prank like this causes.

Police officers have to spend their time searching the campus, and playing traffic instead of being able to respond to real crimes. Hourly employees miss out on wages, rehearsals have to be cancelled,  lessons have to be rescheduled and students/professors loose valuable class time.

My class that meets on Monday nights only will be further behind because of this incident.  LSU is already changed the academic calendar around to accommodate the days campus was closed for Isaac. Who knows what the is going to happen to the calendar now.

Ultimately, I wonder why college campuses are the target of these threats and are they related to each other?  Also, are these threats related to the recent protests and activity in the Middle East?  Or are these just some dumb kids taking advantage of everyones tensions and trying to get out of taking an exam?

I realize this hasn't been a blog post where I discuss Joseph Roach's surrogation, which I did read about this afternoon after the evacuation, and how it relates to the vintage dance performers I am writing about for a conference paper.  This is more of a blog post where I rant about something that has affected both my personal and academic life (ha, like they are not one in the same) and then ask questions about it because I really don't understand it.  I don't understand how in the current tension filled climate someone thinks that calling in a bomb threat is somehow justified.  I really hope that they find who called the threat in and then they give him/her 20 years in "federal-pound-[them]-in-the-ass-prison."  (Thanks Office Space!)

Hopefully the next blog posts will be posted on a more regular schedule and with more interesting things to talk about than bomb threats.

Now if you excuse me, I have to figure out why my 3 year old MacBook is refusing to charge.

Please feel free to leave any kind of questions, comments, or answers.  There is always space and time for a conversation.

TTFN,

Evleen