The university has received a generic bomb threat that we are treating as real. Classes for the day and evening are cancelled.—
Aurora University (@AuroraU) March 20, 2013
UPDATED: 1:30 p.m. 3/20/2013
CHICAGO (CBS) – Aurora University is canceling all day and evening classes because of a bomb threat to the school.
“AU Campus Public Safety and the Aurora Police Department are currently searching campus in the wake of this morning’s bomb threat,” according to an alert on the university’s website.
At 1:30 p.m., Aurora police announced the campus had been secured.
The threats were not specific and came via four emails around 7 a.m., according to university spokesman Steven McFarland.
Aurora University President Rebecca Sherrick said that the university was the target of another threat in the fall.
“The police are working with our campus police department right now,” she said. “We are going through every building at least twice.”
Sherrick said authorities believed the emails came from the same person using different email addresses.
Employees are being sent home and 50 residential students are being relocated to nearby Freeman Elementary school, 153 S. Randall Road.
They arrived at the school around 9:15 a.m. and were sent to the lower level of the school in kindergarten classrooms.
Officials at the university, 347 S. Gladstone Ave., says it will be sending hourly updates to the campus community as the threat is investigated.
According to the university’s website, approximately 4,400 degree-seeking students attend the Illinois and Wisconsin campuses, including 2,600 undergraduates.
