Campus Alert Archive
Longwood

Greenwood Library and Brock Hall Cleared in Farmville: Longwood Joins the Post-ODU Virginia Library Bomb-Threat Wave

VAbomb threatemergency notificationmedium confidence
Confirmed HoaxDetermined to be a hoax. The institutional response is documented because it reveals how the alert system performed under a perceived real threat.

At 2:12 p.m. EDT on March 13, 2026, members of the Longwood community received an alert that Greenwood Library and Brock Hall had been evacuated due to an emailed bomb threat. The threat was one of five at Virginia colleges that day, coming less than 30 hours after the deadly ROTC-targeted shooting at Old Dominion University. Farmville Police, Longwood Police, and Virginia State Police investigated; no device was found and an all-clear was issued.

Alerts
2
Response
min
Killed
—
Injured
—
Institution
Longwood University
Public Masters · VA
~4,000 studentsLongwood Alert
Confirmed Timeline

Alert Sequence

2 messages in sequence

Some alert texts below are approximate reconstructions from news coverage, not confirmed verbatim transcripts. Reconstructed texts are shown in italic with a dashed border. Verified verbatim texts have a solid border and are marked accordingly.

INITIAL ALERTSMS
Approximate reconstruction262 chars
Longwood Alert: Greenwood Library and Brock Hall have been evacuated due to an emailed bomb threat. Avoid the area. Longwood Police and Farmville Police are on scene investigating. Additional updates will be sent through Longwood Alert as the situation develops.

This text has been reconstructed from news coverage and may not reflect the exact original wording.

Issued at 2:12 p.m. EDT — the latest of the five Virginia alerts that day, after UVA (11:49 a.m.), GMU (12:52 p.m.), Bridgewater (12:47 p.m.), and Randolph-Macon (~2:30 p.m.)
Greenwood Library is Longwood's central library; Brock Hall is the adjacent academic-services building — naming both reflects an abundance-of-caution evacuation of the immediate library complex
Longwood is a public master's institution of ~4,000 students in Farmville, Virginia — historically a teachers' college, now a state liberal-arts university
The Rotunda, Longwood's student newspaper, ran day-of coverage describing the alert and the evacuation
Longwood's emergency-notification archive ([alerts.longwood.edu](https://alerts.longwood.edu/)) is one of the few Virginia campus archives that publishes alert text
ALL CLEARSMS+1h 48m
Approximate reconstruction223 chars
Longwood Alert: Greenwood Library and Brock Hall have been cleared by law enforcement. No threat was found. The all clear has been issued. Normal operations are resuming. Thank you for your cooperation during this incident.

This text has been reconstructed from news coverage and may not reflect the exact original wording.

Sent approximately two hours after the initial alert — slightly longer than Bridgewater (72 minutes) and Randolph-Macon (50 minutes), reflecting the larger building footprint (library plus Brock Hall)
Standard 'no threat was found' language — the operational anti-hoax reassurance pattern across all five Virginia alerts that day
Longwood's alert system is named simply 'Longwood Alert' — a less branded approach than UVA's 'UVA Emergency Alert' or Bridgewater's 'BC Alert'
Context

Background

Longwood University is a public master's institution of approximately 4,000 students in Farmville, Virginia — historically the Virginia State Female Normal School (founded 1839), now a state liberal-arts university. Its central library, the Greenwood Library, is a 100,000-square-foot facility that anchors the academic core of campus; Brock Hall houses academic services and is immediately adjacent. On March 13, 2026, Longwood received an emailed bomb threat targeting Greenwood Library. The Longwood Alert system pushed an evacuation order at 2:12 p.m. EDT. Longwood Police, Farmville Police, and Virginia State Police investigated; no device was found. The threat was the fifth of five at Virginia colleges that day, coming less than 30 hours after a gunman attacked an ROTC class at Old Dominion University and was killed by ROTC students. The wave also struck UVA (Shannon Library), George Mason (Fenwick Library), Bridgewater (Forrer Learning Commons), and Randolph-Macon (McGraw-Page Library); Shenandoah University evacuated its library separately for an unspecified 'active threat.' Virginia State Police and the FBI are investigating the origin of the emails, which reportedly appear to have come from outside the country. The case sits in the archive as part of the post-ODU-ROTC-attack copycat wave, in which the proximate trigger was an attack on a military-training program at a sister Virginia institution, but the day-after threats targeted academic libraries — an oblique displacement that left small public liberal-arts campuses like Longwood operating at active-threat tempo over an emailed hoax. Longwood had been hit by another bomb threat targeting Grainger Hall on October 14, 2024 — its 2026 response posture was therefore unusually well-rehearsed.
Analysis

Key Findings

Longwood was the fifth of five Virginia colleges hit by emailed bomb threats on March 13, 2026 — the day after the ODU ROTC-targeted shooting
Naming both Greenwood Library and Brock Hall reflects an abundance-of-caution evacuation of the immediate library complex, not just the threatened building
Longwood had previously experienced a bomb threat targeting Grainger Hall on October 14, 2024 — its 2026 response posture was unusually well-rehearsed
The all-clear came approximately two hours after the initial alert — slightly longer than the smaller campuses (Bridgewater 72 min, Randolph-Macon 50 min), reflecting the larger building footprint
Longwood is a former teachers' college of ~4,000 students in Farmville — among the public master's institutions on the Virginia bomb-threat wave
Outcome
Greenwood Library and Brock Hall were cleared by Longwood Police, Farmville Police, and Virginia State Police. No device was found. The threat is being investigated as part of a coordinated email-threat wave hitting five Virginia colleges on March 13, 2026, with Virginia State Police and the FBI investigating the origin of the emails.
Provenance

Sources

  1. Student Paper
    Bomb Threat Prompts Evacuation of Greenwood Library, Six VA Colleges Targeted — The Rotunda (Longwood student newspaper)
    therotundaonline.com
  2. News
    Multiple bomb threats at Virginia colleges following ODU shooting — VPM
    vpm.org
  3. News
    Multiple bomb threats at Virginia colleges following ODU shooting — WHRO
    whro.org
  4. Student Paper
    Five Virginia universities targeted by bomb threats Friday — Cavalier Daily
    cavalierdaily.com
  5. Official
    Longwood University Weather & Emergency Alerts — official archive
    alerts.longwood.edu
  6. Source
    Longwood University — Wikipedia
    en.wikipedia.org
Tags
bomb-threathoaxlibraryevacuationvirginiapost-odu-waverotc-contextcoordinated-threatemail-threatpublic-universityformer-teachers-collegeHoax
Added May 2026Updated May 2026Via ingestion