Three Ivy League universities evacuate buildings after bomb threats

FILE PHOTO: Students walk across the campus of Columbia University in New York, October 5, 2009. REUTERS/Mike Segar

Three elite Ivy League universities in New York and Rhode Island evacuated parts of their campuses on Sunday after receiving threats that bombs were placed inside several buildings.

In a series of afternoon tweets, Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, told students, staff and visitors to immediately leave the law school, Goldwin Smith, Upson Hall and Kennedy Hall and to avoid central campus after local police received a call about bombs being put in those buildings.

“Please do not call the Cornell Police unless you have an emergency,” the private school of 21,000 students said.

After also receiving a bomb threat by phone, Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, evacuated several buildings near the university’s college green, a spokesperson for the school of 7,000 undergraduate students said in an email.

Columbia University, which has 31,000 students, also evacuated several buildings on its New York City campus after bomb threats. After more than two hours, New York police found the threats not to be credible and the buildings were reopened, the school said on Twitter.

On Friday, Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, also an Ivy League school, received bomb threats that were later found not to be credible.