By John Brown and Greg Clark
Arizona Daily Wildcat
October 15, 1997

Bogus bomb threat empties CBS

A bogus bomb threat delayed test-takers yesterday evening at the Chemistry and Biological Sciences building, after a male caller phoned the building information desk to say he'd placed a half-pound of C-4 explosives in a CBS room.

The caller said the bomb would explode 20 minutes after the 6:17 p.m. call, said Sgt. Rolf Averill of the University of Arizona Police Department.

Police evacuated the building, at 1340 E. University Blvd., and about 200 students waited while officers combed the premises.

Psychology senior Dave Parenteau was in a biology computer lab on the second floor and said he wasn't aware anything was amiss.

"I thought it was a fire alarm" he said.

Parenteau was not among the students in the building taking a mid-term exam and upset about the interruption.

Psychology sophomore Jeff Toffoli was in the middle of a chemistry lab test when the fire alarms went off.

The class was forced to evacuate.

"It was kind of difficult because we had an hour less time to do the lab," Toffoli said. "I was really kind of hoping we wouldn't have to do it at all."

The teaching assistant who ran the lab tests later decided to give students an extra hour to complete the midterm.

Toffoli said he was able to finish both the practical and written sections of the exam.

Romas Gedvilas, a biosystems engineering junior and a lab technician for a 300-level chemistry lab, said the 12 students doing experiments in his lab were angry.

"Most of them didn't finish the lab because of it," Gedvilas said.

"They only get three hours twice a week, so this takes away from their ability to complete the labs greatly," he said.

Gedvilas said another bomb threat interrupted labs at CBS during midterms last semester.

Cmdr. Brian Seastone said the coincidence of several classes taking tests during the threat was not really a surprise.

"This time a year we see an increase in the number of bomb threats because of mid-terms and finals," Seastone said.

Averill said the building supervisor decided to evacuate, not UAPD.

The bomb threat sparked Professor Marty Hewlett to cancel his organic biology class.