October 4, 2015
2:21 p.m. “Safety Advisory: Unspecified Threat to Philadelphia Area Colleges and Universities.” That was the subject line of the email that I, amongst the other 10,735 students at Villanova University, received from the Director of Public Safety, David Tedjeske.
3:23 p.m. I figured my parents would have received the same email the students received about the threat, but I decided to call anyways. When I called, they had no idea what I was talking about. I read them the email and I could hear the fear for me in their voices. “Why don’t you just take the next train home? You can miss your Monday classes and you’ll go back Tuesday.” This sounded like a good idea. I would be missing 4 classes Monday but I was sure that my professors would be understanding of my absence.
3:46 p.m. I was ready to go home. I was about to go back to my room to check train times when I remembered I had a Spanish test Monday. I started to get anxious, and then decided I would just email her explaining the situation. I would be very flexible and tell her that I could make up the test at any convenient time for her. Crisis averted…so I thought. Almost minutes later I received an email back from my professor that there are no make-ups for the test and if I did not come to class I would get a zero on it. Well, there goes my plan to go home. I was so distraught. I didn’t feel safe staying at home, but I also did not want to take a zero on my test. I decided I would stay in my room all day besides my Spanish test. The problem? My Spanish class was from 1:30-2:20. The threat was for 2:00.
4:00 p.m-11:30 p.m. I spent the day emailing back and forth with the rest of my professors. I explained to them that I was extremely uncomfortable coming to class on Monday due to the threats and I felt much safer staying in my room. My professors were extremely understanding. They wrote back that there would still be class, in fact I later found out that the professors were specifically told not to cancel class, but that I would not be penalized for not coming.
10:00 p.m. That night, my roommate, three of our friends, and myself piled into our room. We ordered Chinese food at 10:00 and watched "Friends" and did puzzles because what could be more comforting than that? We talked about the threats and our fears of them. We talked about which professors were understanding about our decision to not come to class the next day. We were getting constant updates about who was staying on campus, going to classes, and going home that night or the next morning.
October 5, 2015
11:30 a.m. Monday morning my roommate’s dad came from New York to be with us, and to make us feel safer. He picked us up and took us to eat lunch off campus so we wouldn’t be there at 2:00. While we were driving past the main part of campus, we saw an ABC 6 News van outside recording and interviewing students. As we sat eating, we were constantly refreshing Villanova’s “Yik Yak” feed to see what was going on on campus. We sat in near silence when 2:00 came as we refreshed the feed. Nothing. People were talking about reports of someone being arrested on campus. There had been similar reports all day of people getting stopped and questioned by police on and around campus.
4:00 p.m. When we returned back to campus it looked abandoned. There were a few students roaming about here and there but the vast majority of people were inside their dorms. I thanked my roommate’s dad and went up to my room to do work.
4:20 p.m. My roommate came back up to the room and told me she was going back home to New York with her dad for the night, and that she’d be coming back for classes Tuesday morning. When she asked if I wanted to come I hardly hesitated. I didn’t want to be on campus, none the less be on campus alone. Less than two hours later we were in New York and away from the craziness that had become our Monday.
October 6, 2015
12:00 p.m. Getting back to campus Tuesday afternoon was shocking. Everyone was out and about the campus. It looked like a completely normal day. From that day on almost no one has talked about the threats. it has almost become one of those unmentionable subjects; something we pretend didn’t happen because it made us feel safer.
Although I feel safe on campus again, going to class now is still scary. I walk with only one headphone in so I can stay aware of my surroundings. although nothing really happened, and no one was hurt, knowing that our school was one of the schools under a threat makes me a little more cautious.
