4 Local Schools Close Due To Threats At St. Xavier – Threats Refer To Possible Campus Attacks on 4/14
April 14, 2008 by national
Filed under Incident Reports
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Chicago – Saint Xavier University and four other nearby schools will be closed Monday. Graffiti found in a dorm on the St. Xavier campus threatened a deadly attack Monday.
Each of the schools’ websites informs students and parents about today’s school closings. Some say it’s because of their proximity to St. Xavier, some say they are closing in solidarity with the college campus.
The schools closed Monday are Mother McAuley High School, Brother Rice High School, Queen of Martyrs Elementary School and Evergreen Park Southwest Elementary. Altogether, more than 6,200 students are enrolled at those four schools.
Mother McAuley and Brother Rice high schools share a property line on the western edge of St. Xavier’s Chicago campus. Queen of Martyrs is just east of St. Xavier and Evergreen Park Southwest is also nearby.
The Brother Rice and McAuley websites indicate that all athletic practices, home activities and events are cancelled as well and that everything will resume as scheduled on Tuesday.
The closings follow Friday’s shutdown of both campuses of St Xavier. All students were asked to leave the Chicago and Orland Park campuses by noon Saturday. Non-essential staff also are not allowed on campus.
Campus employees found two threatening messages in Regina Hall, a freshman dormitory. The second one caused university officials to take extreme precautions because it warned “Be prepared to die on 4/14.”
St. Xavier University President Dwyer said, “This is a real enough threat we do not have these types of threats and when it was so specific to name a date, law enforcement said this is different from what we’ve seen at other college campuses and certainly at St. Xavier.”
The president has not decided when to re-open the college. She said students and staff will be notified by e-mail, text messages and telephone.
Meantime, another university in Michigan is also closed Monday due to threats of violence specific to Monday’s date.
Threatening graffiti found in three men’s restrooms led Oakland University in Rochester, Mich., to cancel campus classes, sports and cultural activities for two days.
The school said it sent out a security alert Saturday after finding one threatening message, and officials said they found similar messages in men’s restrooms in two other buildings later that day.
The school didn’t reveal contents of the threats. But university Police Chief Sam Lucido told the Detroit Free Press that they referred to possible campus attacks on “4/14.”
That is the same date noted in the threatening graffiti found at St. Xavier.
Lucido spoke Sunday with the head of security at St. Xavier, Oakland spokesman Ted Montgomery told The Associated Press.
“I don’t think as of yet they’ve established any connection that seems reliable,” he said.
Lucido told the Free Press that the Oakland University threats didn’t target anyone specific, and that authorities believe the same person left all three threats.
