I don't think it is funny.
Related: Harvard Hoax?
Yup, it was all a big joke.
"Bomb scare rattles Harvard campus; No devices found; some students suspect a hoax" by Eric Moskowitz | Globe Staff, December 16, 2013
CAMBRIDGE — Joe Palana had just sat down for the last exam of his first semester at Harvard Monday when alarm bells pierced the silence at Emerson Hall. Like others around him, the freshman from Rockland thought it was just a fire drill, so he left his bag. But he grabbed his coat.
That made him luckier than some of the hundreds of Harvard students and faculty who were displaced at 9 a.m. by a bomb scare and walked out in their shirtsleeves or without their university ID cards, only to be locked out for hours as law enforcement swept the campus over what officials called “unconfirmed reports of explosives.”
Police ultimately found no suspicious devices, but the threat, which officials said came via e-mail, drew an array of emergency responders and a throng of reporters to Harvard, eight months after the attack on the Boston Marathon. In Washington, President Obama was briefed.
But the mood on campus seemed to shift quickly from fear toward curiosity, annoyance, or indifference, long before the last of the four evacuated buildings was deemed bomb-free around 3 p.m. Almost from the start, officials called the evacuation a result of “an abundance of caution,” and many students speculated that the threat was an exam-period hoax.
Related: Easy A's at Harvard
Why would anyone want to cancel exams?
“My guess is someone is trying to cause mischief during finals week,” said Nathan Pflueger, a graduate student who had just arrived at his office at the Science Center when the alarm went off, prompting a mass exodus.
“Ten-to-one it’s an obnoxious effort to stop an exam today,” said sophomore Connor Harris, standing outside the center five hours later, yellow caution tape and a cluster of emergency vehicles still blocking the entrance.
Harris said the atmosphere was “nothing like” that of last April, when the university and surrounding area was on lockdown during the manhunt in Watertown for the Marathon bombing suspects. “People were quite frightened” then, he said.
But possibly because it took place at Harvard, the threat Monday made news worldwide. Harris awakened to read not just a university emergency alert message but also a text from his parents in Connecticut, hoping he was safe. Standing on the blocked-off end of Kirkland Street, he read a news story on his phone about the threat, in German, on the website of Der Spiegel.
The threat targeted Emerson, Thayer, and Sever halls in Harvard Yard and the Science Center, just beyond the yard.
Thayer and Emerson reopened after four hours, Sever after five, and the Science Center after six hours, though a heightened police and security presence remained well into the afternoon.
After the evacuation, officials closed Harvard Yard to the public, restricting access to those with university IDs.
By 11, a few dozen students were waiting along Massachusetts Avenue to return through one of the limited-access gates. Despite the helicopters overhead and the power cords for satellite trucks running down the sidewalk, the mood was the usual end-of-semester mix of jubilation and anxiety, with little evident fear.
The American people NEED ANOTHER FALSE FLAG to get back on the "fear" ball the Globe seems to be looking for and hoping to find.
Michael Casciotti, shivering in shorts and flip-flops, was just trying to stay warm.
Related: The Boston Globe Farts in Your Face
Maybe that will heat things up.
“I’m very cold,” said the freshman from Pennsylvania, who had ventured barefoot and bleary-eyed from his Thayer dorm room into the hall at the sound of the alarm.
“I left all my stuff in there, didn’t have any clothes on, so my friend gave me a sweater and flip-flops,” he said.
As the three-hour mark approached, Palana, the freshman from Rockland, remained displaced from his bag and his dorm room, in Thayer. He had decamped for an upperclass dorm far from the yard — “I wasn’t too concerned, [but] I had some friends that were pretty scared” — but wandered back toward Harvard Yard for lunch, spotting a friend waving from the third floor of a dorm just inside the gate. A federal Homeland Security sport utility vehicle had just raced past, sirens blaring. But the friend, shirtless, appeared unconcerned.
“Hey, Adam!” Palana called. “You look not very cold. It’s not so warm out here.”
Palana glanced at his phone and saw an update: His exam had been rescheduled for a choice of 6:30 p.m. Monday night or the third week of next semester.
His classmate Emma Woo cringed; Monday’s new timing coincided with her chorus concert, so she would have to study again over break. “Dude, that’s the worst,” Palana said.
A Harvard e-mail advised students that afternoon exams would be held as scheduled, with exams in affected buildings moved but not canceled.
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences message advised students that if they felt unable to take their exams for any reason, “including anxiety, loss of study time, lack of access to material and belongings left in one of the affected buildings, or travel schedule,” they could skip the exam and take a grade based on coursework to date.
Then the hoax worked!
That prompted a group of graduate students to begin drafting a reply cautioning that the approach would “set up a new and dangerous precedent on campus, that bomb threats will get students out of final exam responsibilities.”
“We see the note as analogous to negotiating with terrorists,” doctoral student Alek Chakroff said in an e-mail to the Globe. “We sympathize with students who are distressed by the threats, especially in the wake of the Marathon bombings. But in responding to these threats, we think excusing students from exams should be the exception, not the rule.”
A subsequent Harvard e-mail reiterated the policy for students who skipped Monday afternoon exams but clarified that anyone who felt unable to take another exam this week as a result of the bomb threat would need evaluation and documentation from student mental health services.
Crazy kids!
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"Harvard undergrad arrested in bomb hoax" by Eric Moskowitz | Globe Staff, December 18, 2013
A Harvard student trying to get out of a final exam admitted to the FBI that he sent a bomb threat that forced the university to evacuate multiple buildings and rattled the campus, federal officials said Tuesday.
At the school of easy A's? He/she must be an idiot!
Instead of going home for winter break, 20-year-old Eldo Kim was arrested Tuesday and held overnight on federal bomb hoax charges. He is scheduled to appear in US District Court Wednesday, said US Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz’s office.
The FBI said Kim sent an anonymous e-mail to Harvard officials, campus police, and others at about 8:30 a.m. Monday warning of “shrapnel bombs” in four buildings.
“[Be] quick for they will go off soon,” the message warned, according to the FBI, which said Kim admitted to adding the word “shrapnel” because it sounded more dangerous.
The threat prompted the university to evacuate three buildings in Harvard Yard — Emerson, Sever, and Thayer halls — as well as the massive Science Center nearby, just as the 9 a.m. exams were beginning. Coming eight months after the Boston Marathon attack, the threat drew a swarm of law enforcement agencies and attracted international attention.
The search for possible explosives disrupted the campus for much of the day and forced a number of exams to be postponed.
According to an FBI affidavit, Kim used a disposable, temporary e-mail address and a temporary Internet Protocol to send his warning — with the subject line “bombs placed around campus” — to two university officials, Harvard police, and the student newspaper.
But university officials determined by the end of the day that Kim had used a Harvard wireless network to create the IP, prompting an FBI agent and a campus police officer to interview him in his dorm Monday night.
The agent, Thomas M. Dalton, said Kim admitted to authoring the hoax, picking Emerson Hall, the site of his exam, and three other targets.
Then he walked to his exam. “According to Kim, upon hearing the alarm, he knew that his plan had worked,” Dalton wrote in the affidavit.
The bomb-hoax charge under federal law carries a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a $250,000 fine.
Throw the book at him!
Harvard officials thanked law enforcement in a statement Tuesday, saying the hoax caused “significant disruption to our campus and a difficult time for many.”
“We are aware that a member of our community has been arrested in relation to this matter and are saddened by the details alleged in the criminal complaint,” officials said.
Kim’s family could not immediately be reached.
On an undated biography on the website for Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Kim identified himself as a research assistant helping to analyze “partisan taunting.” He also called himself a writer for the Harvard International Review and a dancer with the Harvard Breakers.
In addition, he claimed to enjoy “playing pool, trying new restaurants, watching terrible cult films, and playing with his Mini Schnauzer puppy.”
Sounds like a nice kid. Stupid, but nice.
One of the editors in chief of the review, junior Mathilde Montpetit of Boston, said Kim went through an introductory process, writing an article and doing sample editing, as a freshman early last year, then resigned.
Montpetit said that most of her friends quickly assumed the bomb threat was a hoax and that few around her were on edge. But she called it a waste of Harvard time and taxpayer resources.
“I don’t know if he deserves five years in prison, but it was definitely stupid,” Montpetit said.
I want the f***ing little s*** put to death!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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