Professor's notes lead to evacuation of Alison Hall

Update - 2:40 p.m.: University police have determined the threat written on the blackboard was written by a professor as part of a class lesson. The message was not meant to be threatening, police said.

At 8:15 a.m.Wednesday, university police were notified of a bomb threat in Alison Hall. A university employee had seen a threat written on a blackboard in the building and notified police immediately, Chief Patrick Ogden said.

Following the call, university police teamed up with Delaware Technical and Community College to obtain a dog trained in explosives to help search the building. Nothing was discovered and the building was deemed safe.

"There were indications that perhaps there was a bomb in the building so we brought in the dog to do a sweep," Ogden said.

Once the threat was dialed in, police shut down Alison Hall until approximately 9:30 am. During that time, campus police did a room-to-room sweep of the building with the dog. Newark Police directed traffic getting into and out of the back of Alison Hall.

"The message could have been a prank or could have been left from the night before," Ogden said. "We're doing an investigation of how it could have happened."

The university is currently working to train a dog of its own in explosives for events like these. Newark Police has dogs trained in narcotics, but none in explosives. The state is also lacking working dogs trained in this area, so the university reached out to Delaware Technical and Community College for help, Ogden said.

"We're hoping by next school year to have at least one K9 team up and running so that if we have an incident in the future the building shouldn't be closed for an hour," Ogden said.

A follow up investigation has just begun and police will be obtaining class schedules and maintenance and security work schedules for the building to see who may have been around the room or building the night before. While Alison Hall has no security cameras set up, police will be checking footage from nearby areas.

Ogden emphasized that the majority of threats called in do not end up in an actual issue, it is important to err on the side of caution.

"It could have very easily been a student in the building wrote a note on the blackboard," he said. "There's an investigation to try to ID the person and go from there."