Lukas Flippo, Senior Photographer

The University was put on high alert when a bomb threat was reported on Nov. 5th that caused Old Campus and many other buildings on the main part of campus to be evacuated. 

Students were evacuated after the New Haven Police Department received reports of multiple bombs on Yale’s campus. After a thorough investigation, the coast was considered clear and students were able to return to class and their dorms. Over the next several days other Ivy League schools including Columbia University, Cornell University and Brown University received akin threats.

NHPD officers told the New Haven Independent that an unknown person called the police non-emergency communications line and reported 40 bombs were placed around campus. Subsequently, buildings such as Vanderbilt Hall, Bingham Hall, Welch Hall, the University Theater, Jonathan Edwards, Saybrook, Branford, Grace Hopper, and Trumbull Colleges, Bass Library and the Yale Art Gallery were temporarily evacuated. Students were brought to the New Haven Green before being directed to various other indoor spaces. 

“We’re treating this as if it is a legitimate threat, however at this time we are still working on who the caller was,” then-acting NHPD Chief Renee Dominguez said at a press conference on the scene. 

The all-clear was later given at 6:52 pm when the YPD announced that “there is no validity to the bomb threat made against Yale” and campus resumed normal operations.

However, two days after Yale’s scare, three other Ivy Universities faced similar threats. Throughout that Sunday afternoon, Cornell, Columbia, and Brown received bomb threats in that order and were evacuated accordingly. The all-clear was announced for all three universities by the end of the day. 

At the following Tuesday morning press conference, the NHPD said that the bomb threat at Yale may be connected to similar bomb threats that targeted several other universities over the same weekend. 

According to Dominguez, Captain John Healy of the NHPD was notified over the weekend by YPD’s Lieutenant Brian Donnelly that the threat to Yale was “possibly related” to the threats received by multiple other universities over the same weekend including Princeton University, Stanford University, Miami University in Ohio and Ohio University. 

New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker told News that he was very thankful for the police for responding with urgency on the day of the threat. He expressed his appreciation for New Haven students, business and residents for being understanding during Friday afternoons evacuations. 

“This is a huge impact on the city and I heard zero complaints from residents who were evacuated or inconvenienced, because I think people understand the reason why we take these threats very, very seriously,” Elicker said.

All of the Ivy universities that were affected by the threats found them uncredible and resumed back to normal. 

According to the Boston Globe, the FBI suspected a teenage gamer in Virginia as allegedly involved in the spike of bomb threats across Ivy league schools. 

Additionally, NBC said that according to officials, “several ‘online persons operating on the Discord chat platform’ were allegedly involved in swatting incidents in Los Angeles in August and September, and the individuals in that group have been linked to 30 other bomb threats and swatting incidents.”

The bomb threats have not returned to Yale since and students were back in their dorms by Friday evening. 

YPD is located at 101 Ashmun St.