Bomb Scare Raises Safety Questions

The day after a bomb scare emptied out Kirkland House at 3 a.m. Police are investigating the incident and baffled House residents are coming up with a string of theories to explain the night's events.

A spokesman for the Harvard University Police Department refused top comment yesterday on the progress of the investigation saying only that he thought the incident was unrelated to bomb threats received last fall by Room 13, a Stoughton Hall counseling service.

Tutors meanwhile complained yesterday of the malfunction of the House's alarm system and the lack of a contingency plan for evacuating the house.

"If the bomb had gone off at three, every-one would have been in the dorm." Marian McClure, an assistant senior tutor said.

Only 80 percent of the students were awakened at all, she added Kirkland House Master Donald H. Pfister was not available for comment yesterday.

According to McClure, a woman called the Harvard switchboard at 2:40 a.m. yesterday morning and told the operator that a bomb placed in Kirkland House would explode at 3 a.m.

Dial M. for McClure

The operator reported the call to the Harvard Police, who then contacted McClure. McClure sent a resident tutor to set off the fire alarm, but the alarm only rung in the Kirkland annex, which contains entries J through N.

With only minutes to go before three, McClure called in the Cambridge Fire Department and Kirkland superintendent to fix the alarms in the main building. They failed, and she called house tutors and told them to wake students in their entries.

By 315 most of the students had been roused from their beds appearing in the courtyard in dress varying from underwear to tuxedos. Residents were hustled into the Eliot House dining room, where they waited thirty minutes while Harvard Police checked the building for bombs.

William S. Spitzer '83 said that it "seems sort of silly," that he could sleep through the bomb scare undisturbed His entry tutor was working in Massachusetts General Hospital that night, and nobody in the entry was awakened.

Other students chose to ignore their tutors warnings and stayed in bed One Kirkland sophomore, who asked not to be identified, said he and his roommates thought the bomb scare was a prank and bolted the door shut.

"The only fear we had was that the bomb squad would come and find us," he said.

A number of students were reluctant to emerge from their rooms with their "temporary roommates," while others lingered in their rooms to dress before exiting, one tutor observed.

Kirkland House yesterday was rife with speculation as to the origin of the threatening phone call.

Comment Period

One student guessed that the bomb scare was an attempt to disrupt the sleep of would be marathoners, and another blamed Chem. 20 students eager to "manipulate the scale" on yesterday's hourly. Meanwhile, a charge that the Lampoon had phored in the threat was denied yesterday by President Conan C O' Brien '85.

Kirkland resident Elizabeth R Gill '85 dispelled widespread rumors that she had originally received the threat as part of a series of obscene phone calls--and relayed it to the operator.

After the students had returned to their rooms, Buildings and Grounds staff worked until 7 a.m. under the supervision of Master Pfister to repair the broken alarm system.

The maximum penalty for making a bomb threat is 20 years imprisonment, Captain Jack Morse of the Harvard Police said yesterday.