… reminds us about the openness of university classrooms.
The University of Oklahoma issued a warning to professors on Thursday after several men walked into a classroom and refused to leave.
In the alert issued to Arts and Sciences chairs and directors, Dean Paul Bell Jr. warned staffers about the incident last Wednesday.
It said two groups of men went into two large adjacent lecture halls in Dale Hall. The letter said that the men walked in uniform and most of them sat down at the same time, while two stood by the back doors. The letter said the men refused to leave when asked by the instructor, but eventually did walk out without incident.
In uniform meaning wearing uniforms, or simply together? The same way?
Could be a frat prank, but it’s very similar to the way terrorist dry runs look. There have been enough mass shootings at American universities for this to be extremely scary behavior.
If it were only one classroom, I’d wonder about some local gang protecting a member in the class. This is more sinister.
March 13th, 2009 at 9:57AM
Very bizarre indeed, the classrooms in question are very large lecture halls, that hold ~250 students each. From what I hear the men were wearing trench coats and were dressed similarly.
You have to wonder why no one called 911, why students didn’t take pictures of these people with cell phones, why no one noticed them enter/leave the building, why no one followed them when they left…
After all the incidents that have happened on campuses (Seung-Hui Cho – Va Tech, Steven Kazmierczak – Northern Illinois, Joel Henry Hinrichs – Oklahoma), it seems like students would be more vigilant with regard to actions such as these.