Campus Alert Archive
LSU

30,000 People Off Campus in an Hour: LSU's Mass Evacuation After a Single 911 Call

LAbomb threatemergency notificationhigh 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.

On the morning of September 17, 2012, an anonymous caller phoned a bomb threat into Louisiana State University 911 at approximately 10:32 AM CDT. LSU sent a campus-wide text-message and website alert at 11:32 AM CDT ordering an immediate evacuation, sending roughly 30,000 students, faculty, and staff off the Baton Rouge main campus. After a hours-long sweep no device was found, and the university began letting residents return to the dorms in mid-afternoon. The caller, William Bouvay Jr., later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 24 years in prison.

Alerts
4
Response
60 min
Killed
0
Injured
0
Institution
Louisiana State University
Public R1 · LA
~30,000 studentsLSU Emergency Text Message System
Confirmed Timeline

Alert Sequence

4 messages in sequence · 2 verified verbatim

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
Verified verbatimThe Spokesman-Review wire report quoting the LSU text-message alert sent at 11:32 AM CDT on September 17, 201294 chars
A bomb threat has been reported on the LSU campus. Evacuate as calmly and quickly as possible.
Sent approximately one hour after the 10:32 AM CDT 911 call — LSU later defended the delay as the time required to verify the threat's specificity and coordinate the evacuation with Baton Rouge Police
'Evacuate as calmly and quickly as possible' became the case's quotable phrase and was repeated verbatim in national wire coverage
The alert deliberately avoided naming a target building so that the entire 1,237-acre main campus would clear rather than have students drift toward whichever building was named
UPDATESMS
Verified verbatimTIME wire coverage quoting the second LSU text-message alert during the investigation phase118 chars
LSU continues to investigate the bomb threat reported earlier today. Please stay off campus unless directed to return.
Sent during the sweep phase while LSU Police and Baton Rouge Bomb Squad were clearing buildings — students had already largely dispersed to local restaurants, the Mall of Louisiana, and friends' off-campus apartments
The phrase 'unless directed to return' was a deliberate signal that a sequenced reopening was coming, not a full all-clear
LSU residence-hall students who had nowhere to go were directed to the LSU Field House and to Bengal Village apartments at the edge of campus
UPDATESMS
Approximate reconstruction150 chars
Residence hall students may return to their residence halls. Academic buildings remain closed. Continue to monitor LSU.edu and your phone for updates.

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

Reopening residence halls before academic buildings was a deliberate triage — students had nowhere to go for the night while academic buildings could remain swept overnight
Most academic buildings reopened the following day, September 18; classes resumed Tuesday morning
The phased reopening became a model later cited in Pitt's response to its 2012 spring bomb-threat wave
ALL CLEAREmail
Approximate reconstruction458 chars
The LSU main campus has been declared safe by LSU Police following a comprehensive sweep with assistance from Baton Rouge Police and the Louisiana State Police. No suspicious device was located. Residence halls have reopened. Academic buildings will reopen on a phased schedule beginning Tuesday morning, September 18. Classes scheduled for Monday afternoon and evening are canceled. The university thanks the LSU community for its calm and orderly response.

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

The all-clear named the specific agencies (LSU Police, Baton Rouge Police, Louisiana State Police) that participated in the sweep — a transparency move that became standard practice at LSU after this incident
Monday-night classes (3,000+ enrollments) were canceled outright rather than rescheduled — a pragmatic decision given the late hour and dispersed student body
The case directly informed LSU's revised bomb-threat protocol, which moved the agency-coordination step earlier in the response timeline
Context

Background

The September 17, 2012 LSU bomb threat came at the tail end of a national wave of campus bomb threats that had begun with the University of Pittsburgh bomb-threat campaign (160 threats targeting 52 buildings, February through April 2012) and continued at North Dakota State and University of Texas at Austin just three days earlier on September 14, 2012. An anonymous caller phoned LSU's 911 at approximately 10:32 AM CDT on September 17. LSU sent its first campus-wide text-message alert at 11:32 AM — a one-hour gap that LSU later defended as the time required to verify specificity and coordinate with Baton Rouge Police, but which became the most-debated detail of the incident. Approximately 30,000 students, faculty, and staff evacuated the 1,237-acre Baton Rouge main campus. LSU Police, Baton Rouge Police, and the Louisiana State Police conducted a sweep of academic buildings; residence halls reopened in mid-afternoon and academic buildings reopened on a phased schedule beginning the following morning. No device was found. The caller, William Bouvay Jr. of Baton Rouge, was identified through phone-trace evidence; he pleaded guilty to the LSU threat and unrelated additional bomb-threat calls and was ultimately sentenced to 24 years in federal prison. The case is significant for the archive because it documents (1) one of the largest single-day campus evacuations in modern US higher-education history by headcount, (2) the September 2012 cluster of copycat-style bomb threats at large public R1s that helped formalize evacuate-first/sweep-later protocols, and (3) an early example of phased reopening (residence halls first, academic buildings later) that became widely adopted thereafter.
Analysis

Key Findings

Approximately 30,000 students, faculty, and staff evacuated LSU's 1,237-acre main campus following a single anonymous 911 call — one of the largest single-day campus evacuations in modern US higher-education history by headcount
The roughly one-hour gap between the 10:32 AM CDT 911 call and the 11:32 AM CDT campus-wide text alert became the most-debated detail of the response, and LSU subsequently revised its protocol to move agency coordination earlier
LSU pioneered a phased reopening sequence — residence halls first, academic buildings on a staggered schedule the following day — that was later widely adopted at other large public R1s
Caller William Bouvay Jr. was identified through phone-trace evidence, pleaded guilty, and was ultimately sentenced to 24 years in federal prison for the LSU threat and unrelated additional calls
The LSU incident was part of a September 2012 cluster of large-public-R1 bomb threats (NDSU, UT Austin, LSU within four days) that immediately followed the spring 2012 Pitt wave
Outcome
No device was found and no injuries reported. The campus was reopened by late afternoon; residence halls were reopened first, followed by academic buildings. William Bouvay Jr. was identified by phone-trace evidence, pleaded guilty to the threat (and later additional unrelated bomb-threat calls), and was ultimately sentenced to 24 years in federal prison. The September 17 evacuation became a standard case study in LSU emergency management training.
Provenance

Sources

  1. News
    LSU Evacuates Due to Bomb Threat - TIME
    newsfeed.time.com
  2. News
    LSU students returning to dorms after bomb threat - The Spokesman-Review
    spokesman.com
  3. News
    LSU main campus evacuated after bomb threat - CBS News
    cbsnews.com
  4. News
    Bomb threat cleared at LSU campus, university says - NBC News
    nbcnews.com
  5. News
    LSU is latest institution where bomb threat forces evacuation - Inside Higher Ed
    insidehighered.com
  6. Official
    Campus Evacuation or Shelter-in-place - LSU Police
    lsu.edu
  7. Student Paper
    Baton Rouge man arrested for 2018 Instagram bomb threat suing LSU - The Reveille
    lsureveille.com
Tags
bomb-threatevacuationlouisianalsupublic-r12012-bomb-threat-wavemass-evacuationbaton-rougeconvicted-caller2012Hoax
Added May 2026Updated May 2026Via ingestion