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Someone online posted a message saying that they were going to shoot up the quad at the University of Chicago at 10 AM on Monday morning. Dozens of these kinds of posts are made online every day, but it seems that the University of Chicago is sufficiently freaked out that they have decided to cancel all classes and events on Monday and request that staff work from home.

The following is a message from the university:

The University was informed by FBI counterterrorism officials today (Sunday) that an unknown individual posted an online threat of gun violence against the University of Chicago, specifically mentioning “the campus quad” on Monday morning at 10 a.m. Based on the FBI’s assessment of this threat and recent tragic events at other campuses across the country, we have decided in consultation with federal and local law enforcement officials, to exercise caution by canceling all classes and activities on the Hyde Park campus through midnight on Monday. All non-medical faculty, students and non-essential staff are asked not to come to the Hyde Park campus on Monday, or to remain indoors as much as possible if they are on campus. Students in College Housing are asked to stay indoors and await direct communication from College Housing Staff.

In response to the threat, the University will have an increased police and security presence on and around campus, including police personnel with visible weapons and other additional measures. University security personnel are keeping in close contact with the FBI, which is continuing to investigate the threat.

In addition to canceling all classes and events at the Hyde Park campus, the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, the University of Chicago Charter School campuses, the University libraries, the Quadrangle Club, and other campus facilities will be closed on Monday. The University of Chicago Medical Center will remain open to patients, with added security measures. Student Health and Counseling Services will be closed; students may consult csl.uchicago.edu for additional information. Medical Center faculty and staff involved in patient care will receive additional details later this evening.

All University staff and faculty members who do not have emergency duties or patient care responsibilities are encouraged to avoid coming to the Hyde Park campus on Monday. Individuals with questions about their status should contact their immediate supervisors. We will provide updates at the University homepage, www.uchicago.edu, as more information becomes available, with the expectation of resuming normal University operations on Tuesday.

If you see anything unusual or have urgent questions about security measures, please contact the University of Chicago Police Department at 773-702-8181. Students living on campus who are seeking additional information should contact their resident heads.

Chicago continues to be a constant source of gang related violence. Two men were shot over the weekend in one incident on the south side of the city, and another on Union Avenue. These constant mass shootings among the minority residents hardly raise an eyebrow anymore from the local police department, but the mere threat of an armed person on campus apparently merits an “increased police and security presence on and around campus” involving “police personnel with visible weapons and other additional measures.”

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42 COMMENTS

  1. If only this guy were on pcp and wielding a knife, why the people would be defending him! Demanding justice, even! In fact, if the sniveling little non aborted fetus who did this fessed up, he could probably get off by claiming he was triggered by police brutality.

    You know I’m right and it’s a f%#$king disaster.

    • Right.
      Either that or its going to be a busy month gun-wise for the comandier-in-chief and he needs a few recent incidents to refer to in his coming push

      • First day was Fried Turkey Day, can’t miss that with what remains of the family. Second day was Black Friday, gotta spend the gov’t cheese on discounted stuff. Third day was Saturday, gotta git dat drink on. Then Sunday came and they lost track of time and panicked. Had to come up with something.

    • Nick wrote,

      They don’t have anything to worry about. I’m sure the university is a gun free zone.

      And yet the university cancelled classes and called for additional police personnel on site. This is a tacit admission that “gun free zones” are utterly and totally ineffective.

      How can the gun-grabbers that are “useful idiots” not see this?

      • “How can the gun-grabbers that are “useful idiots” not see this?”

        The “idiot” part answers your question nicely. Either idiot or outright manipulative liar…

      • Cause apparently the military and police are either super-duper trained that they could never possibly mess up with a gun because they are way above us mere mortals in their amazing firearm-handling abilities.

        OR

        They both mess up at times with guns so if they mess up then when a “civilian” does it the damage would be so much worse!

        Those are the two angles they play.

    • Yes, they outsmarted the a-hole who wrote the note. Just in case he was for real they closed the school until midnight. Because he can’t possibly come Tuesday morning.

  2. How long before the over-paid university administrators realize that they cannot operate a university as a for-profit business if they are forced to shut down every time some crackpot makes a threat against the campus, be it gun or bomb? You can’t run a school of higher learning if you can’t guarantee s certain number of days you will actually be in operation. Students will refuse to attend your college/university if they think there are frequent threats of violence and their parents will stop paying your outrageous tuition and other fees.

    Insurance and liability issues mean diddly-squat if you are forced to shut down for lack of students or funds. For those reasons alone you would think they would reconsider their ridiculous Gun Free Campus policy.

    And by the way, what sort of damn fool would publicly threaten to “shoot up the quad” and then announce the exact time he intended to start shooting? Why the hell do foreign students keep coming here for “higher education”? Our universities and colleges are obviously administered by idiots.

  3. “These constant mass shootings among the minority residents hardly raise an eyebrow anymore from the local police department”

    Nor I. Not that gang violence : mass shootings, blah. Running on 5h of sleep. Very few damns given right now.

  4. Way, way, way back in my own college days, we went through a span of having a bomb threat called in to a particular building about once a week or so. Classes cancelled, tests rescheduled, yadda-yadda.

    After, as I recall, about a dozen such calls, with nothing ever happening or found during searches, there was a call that happened to be on the day of one of my midterms.

    The teacher was exasperated with the whole thing and decided to have the test anyway — said anyone uncomfortable could schedule to take the test in his office at their convenience. No one took that offer, we all took the test.

    I couldn’t held asking, though, “What if we do get blowed up during the test?”

    His reply: “You get an A.”

  5. Weirdly, 10:00 is the busiest time for a college campus. So someone either doesn’t want to wake up too early in order to Jihad, knows what they’re doing, or is faking.

    But people who know what they’re doing probably don’t call ahead to make appointments.

  6. Call me cynical, but I’m starting to smell a decaying rat in some of this news stuff.

    Fact: Obama comes out with his “vision” for gun control in 2016. Gun control is not “popular,” so he needs some things to point at.

    Fact: Hillary is pushing gun control for the primary…pushing hard and doubling down. Gun control is not “popular,” so she needs some things to point at.

    Fact: Anti-gun folks have gone full nutjob on the “Gun owners/NRA are terrorists!” rhetoric.

    Fact: Campus Carry has been in the news a lot in recent months.

    Fact: Planned Parenthood has received a lot of negative press in the past six months or so; public funding challenged.

    Fact: Some guy shot some people in Colorado Springs with apparently a thin tendril of a thread connecting it to Planned Parenthood…news coverage hammering on the PP angle to the point that it has now been called an act of terror against women.

    Fact: School in Chicago cancels classes due to a threat of a shooting…

    Now, all of these could be separate pieces of info not tied together in any way.

    Or…are we living “Wag the Dog?” Some of this stuff sure ticks off a lot of convenient boxes…

    • I can certainly see that angle JR.

      And here is a slightly different although related possibility. Psy-ops (psychological operations) are not new. It cannot be that hard to find a few “test subjects”, wind them up (with the right psychological prodding/encouragement), and set them loose … with the end result being another “spree killer” or “senseless act of violence” that no one allegedly saw coming. Given many calls from gun-grabbers to kill people who have a different mindset, such psy-ops would fall well within their idea of acceptable practices.

      I guess time will tell.

      • Wait! That is conspiracy theory talk!

        Be prepared to be talked down to, called a dumbass, and belittled because you dare question the information given to you by the same entities I.E. government and media that constantly lie about guns/gun owners but could never lie about other things!! Why that would be crazy!!

  7. Why do they take any of these threats seriously??? I can’t think of one mass shooting where they called ahead to let people know…….”Oh, Hi! This is Carl Achmed Amadinajad and I just wanted to let you guys know that we should be there around 10ish. Please make certain that everyone is unarmed okay? Have a great day. Alah Akbar!”

  8. If administrators had ignored the FBI’s warning and conducted classes as usual, and something happened, then everyone here would decry the recklessness and incompetence of the university administration.

    • Fair enough.

      How does the FBI sift through the countless threats of this nature they get every day to determine which ones merit closing a school?

      ^^^— Rhetorical Question Only

      Non-rhetorical question: What percentage of mass shooters/school shooters announce their action beforehand, down to the precise time and place? I know a few have done this sort of thing generally…

      Another non-rhetorical question: Do you trust anything you read in the MSM regarding “guns” and “shootings”? <- Point of discussion not necessarily limited to this story.

      • I’m not in law enforcement, let alone counterintelligence. So I really couldn’t speak intelligently on the FBI’s sources and methods of threat assessment. I suppose even if I could, I wouldn’t.

        Layman semi-informed speculation, though? I’d guess they trace the threat as best they can, then compare what they find to what they know about that particular person or persons. It seems frequently with these whackjobs after they attempt something on a plane, during a marathon, on a campus, etc., many times it comes out that they were “known to the police.” Sometimes they were even “known to intelligence services.” That’s hard core.

        When we look at shooters like in Tucson or Aurora, they had histories. (I think the latter actually sent some threatening materials to his shrink? May have been after the fact.) Should a threat have been traced back to them beforehand, I’d take that seriously.

        There was some early chatter about the Boston bombers, too. Not sure whether it specified that event, but it at least named those perps as preparing something. Given their backgrounds, I’d investigate them. Those findings would then help drive any decisions about holding the race.

        What precautions must be taken, then, appears to depend on how specifically we can I.D. the threat maker, and how serious that person’s threats are.

        As for the mainstream media, I’ve not trusted them on interpeting the news for many years. Now I don’t even buy as being accurate their routine reporting of basic facts. For example, it was six months into the Trayvon case before I learned that there was no iced tea purchased. Specifically, it was Arizona brand watermelon fruit juice cocktail. I learned that from an alternate media source, then verified it with the court documents.

        Does the beverage matter? I don’t know. Ask the media, they’re the ones collectively lying about it. I figured they wanted to avoid people stereotyping Trayvon, but that’s giving them undue credit. Even so, selectively distorting the facts is like putting your finger on the scales of justice. I don’t like people rigging the process to ensure an outcome, no matter how supposedly noble that goal may be. The media’s goals are notoriously nefarious, so I’m doubly distrustful.

  9. Don’t they know it’s a gun-free zone, with signs and everything? Obviously, those talismans will prevent a person with the intent to shoot up the school from doing so. So why are administrators cancelling classes? It’s almost like they think gun-free zones don’t work!

  10. Let’s analyze the University response for a moment shall we, and then utilize this as a retort to our anti gun crowd. In response to this “threat”, the University is responding with increased security, including those with VISIBLE weapons.

    So… Open carry, “good guys” with guns… ON CAMPUS… As a deterrent to a potential threat???? My gosh, who would ever think of such a thing? /sarc

    • In response to this “threat”, the University is responding with increased security, including those with VISIBLE weapons.

      That is really good point. Gun-grabbers claim that we are somehow mentally defective for wanting to be armed as a measure to prepare for threats. And yet university security and police are somehow not mentally defective for being armed as a measure to prepare for threats. How can that be? Along the same lines, university management is somehow not mentally defective for sending armed people as a measure to prepare for threats. How can that be?

  11. I actually went to school at u of c, and while it is anti gun for the students, campus security actually has some real teeth. “Campus” security is fully armed including shotguns in their patrol cars, they have full police powers and patrol the city streets in an area of about 4 square miles. Chicago pd only has one patrol car assigned to that area, while campus security used to have at least 8, so response time in that area used to be under 2 minutes. While crime occurs anywhere, that is probably the safest part of Chicago even though it’s surrounded by crime infested neighborhoods. There is a reason why Obama chose to live in Hyde park and it isn’t because of the safety the Chicago pd provides.

  12. These are the salad days for terrorists. They don’t even have to kill anybody to get a bunch of people running around like cats with their tails on fire. All the terrorist needs to do to cause terror and disruption is to make a phone call.

  13. I’m with you JR-bring in the Secret serVICE bunch to investigate a loner/lunatic/thinks he’s an ugly chick. Because he says something negative about barry s. This could be a death penalty case because of the PP angle(and the dead cop-RIP). I’m thinking this joke in Hyde Park(no not barry!) is a 5 day weekend/let’s party and cyber Monday funday…meanwhile in Barrington,IL a high school kid has an actual gun(so they say) and that merits a mention. I knew a bunch of Hyde Park residents(worked at McCormick Hotel) and man what a pack of left-wing loons…

  14. Why do they feel the need to indicate that the Police will have “visible” weapons? That goes without saying for uniformed police.

  15. 80 some shot and 17 murdered over thanksgiving weekend in Chicago…so whats the problem? Just another day in Chicago right? Another democratic sht hole brought to you by the DNC and the liberal looney left….carry on….

  16. OK, here’s some details:

    1. The man who made this threat stated a specific time, and place for his attack,
    2. He specified that he would use specific weapons (A M4 and two Desert Eagles),
    3. He specified that he would be shooting white males – and only white people, threatening to shoot white cops as they came to get him for shooting white male students and faculty.

    So from that standpoint, law enforcement made the right call, IMO – they had a specific threat, to specific people, at a specific time, at a specific place.

    Oh, and the guy making the threat? Yea, he’s black.

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