Why You Should Care About the Scripps Bomb Threat

As many of you know, last Tuesday, Scripps's Malott Commons was the target of a bomb threat.

Many dismissed the bomb threat as nothing more than the ruminations of a man with "unkempt blond hair."

While others, like Ms. Clare Cannon, see this threat as symptomatic of wider communication problems between the administration and the students, I choose to reserve judgment. I'm sure educators are just as terrified as the students. I don't see it as such a problem if the vegan cookies aren't duly dispensed because no one wants to infringe upon such novel concepts as "privacy"-- as if privacy could be said to exist at all in college.

In fact, if history is our guide, the educators have every reason to take all necessary precautions. According to Ward Elliott, a professor of government, recounts the radicalism of the '60's:

CMC's Story House fire, supposedly caused by a hot radiator pipe, was one of 25 fires and three bombs which went off on the Claremont campuses. The Story House fire itself took place six days after a black militant from Pomona, demanding the endorsement of ethnic quotas and black studies courses, had asked the CMC faculty, "Do you want this campus burned down this summer or next summer?" Scripps President and Claremont Provost Mark Curtis was hauled out of his office to answer to an angry crowd of students and faculty. Anonymous phone callers inquired by what route his children went to school. One of the bombs maimed and partially blinded Mary Anne Keatley, wife of Robert Keatley, a CMC football player.

Given this history, I hope that Scripps and any other school faced with comparable threats, frisks away. I frankly don't see the merit of civil liberties if I can't see at all.