Editorial: Opposing opinions on responding to the bomb threat

Jordan's View:
We have seen the writing on the wall, and it's a bomb threat.
A bomb threat was once called into my middle school. The school was on an army base in Germany, so the threat was taken seriously by the military. We were removed from our classrooms and escorted to the nearby movie theater to take shelter.
The military found out who the caller was. It was a student trying to get out of class. The military took action, and his father was heavily demoted and their family was sent back to the United States.
What the military did might be construed as harsh. However, we do live in a post-9/11 society.
Nowadays, everyone seems to fear bombs exploding in public places and airplanes falling out of the sky caused by terrorizing, foreign strangers.
However, most of these claims are not realistic, in my opinion..
Nevertheless, citizens are being taught to fear these strangers as rumors of terror spread.
So when Auburn University receives a message from an anonymous source threatening the lives thousands of students, the University will have to take it seriously. Even if those in power don't believe it is substantiated, they know they would be pressured from the fears and complaints of those they serve to take action.
The University should continue to do whatever necessary to ensure the students, their families and faculty feel safe. This would involve closing the school to quell fears during a bomb threat. Students should not sit in Haley Center and pretend nothing is happening when they know there is threat of an attack.
Furthermore, the University must make timely responses to these threats.
Acknowledging their existence is the only way to prevent the spread of rumors and hysteria among the student body. This is especially necessary when these threats are made public on social media. But closing the University does not stop the threats.
The threats will end with increased enforcement for fear of being caught.
Hopefully, the $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the felon will be as far as enforcement will need to go.
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Becky's View:
Auburn University has opened Pandora's box.
When I was in my junior year of high school, we had a bomb threat almost every week for a good month.
The student who made those threats was sending them in as a joke to get out of class.
The threats eventually stopped when the student turned himself in.
Although bomb threats are a serious matter and should not be taken lightly, shutting down the University for a day only made matters worse.
The University gave into fear, which is what the person who wrote the threat on the wall probably wanted.
Now that the University has reacted this way, the perpetrator, or any other student, may think writing a threat on a bathroom wall is the way to get out of a test.
The Auburn Police Division had been notified about the first threat weeks before Wednesday, April 16.
Because they were aware of the threat, they made sure to have extra police and security on campus to monitor any suspicious activity until the person who wrote the threat was caught.
Police Chief Paul Register said the police department did not think the threat was serious enough to shutdown campus for the day.
Although I don't know all the protocol about handling a threat to campus, I know giving in to the threat was not the right way to go about it.
This was not necessarily a better safe than sorry situation.
With the most recent bomb threat found in another Haley Center bathroom, it only furthers my point that these threats may continue whenever someone wants class to be cancelled.
The University did handle the Tuesday, April 22, bomb threat well because they only shutdown Haley for a few hours while they searched the building.
If the University continues to handle threats like that, then students have a better chance of finishing finals without AU Alert taking over their phones.