Campus Alert Archive
Penn State Behrend

Phoned threat targeting a cafe in the Reed Union Building prompts shelter-in-place

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PAthreat of violenceemergency notificationhigh confidence
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On the morning of February 6, 2015, Penn State Behrend in Erie, Pennsylvania received a phoned-in threat targeting Bruno's Cafe inside the Reed Union Building. The campus alert ordered students and staff to shelter in place and avoid the Reed Building, and normal operations were suspended while police swept the building. Students inside the Reed Union Building were relocated to Erie Hall. No device was found and operations resumed later in the day.

Alerts
3
Response
—
Killed
0
Injured
0
Institution
Penn State Erie, The Behrend College
Public Bachelors · PA
All Penn State Behrend cases →
~4,400 studentsPSUAlert Behrend
Documented Timeline

Alert Sequence

3 messages in sequence · 1 verified verbatim

Confirmed wording is transcribed character-for-character from a primary source. Use Verify this quote under each message to open that source in a new tab and compare the text yourself.

Some messages in this sequence are documented (their existence, timing, and channel are sourced) but their exact wording is not preserved in the public record. Those entries appear as placeholders; only confirmed text is displayed.

UPDATEFacebook
Verified verbatim89 chars
Threats made to Bruno's Cafe. Evacuate now. Avoid Reed Union Building. Watch for updates.
Verify this quote
Verbatim text of Penn State Behrend's official Facebook post on February 6, 2015; the Facebook URL slug spells out the alert text word-for-wordfacebook.comfind archived copies
The Facebook update was more specific than the initial website alert, identifying Bruno's Cafe by name as the target
The 'Evacuate now' directive escalated the website message's 'Shelter in place', a notable inconsistency between channels
Students inside the Reed Union Building were moved to Erie Hall during this phase
ALL CLEARWebsite
Wording not preserved

This message is documented at this point in the sequence, but its exact wording is not preserved in the public record. The public edition displays only confirmed alert text.

Context

Background

On the morning of Friday, February 6, 2015, Penn State Behrend (the 4,400-student commonwealth campus of Penn State University in Erie, Pennsylvania) received a phoned-in threat that specifically targeted Bruno's Cafe, the dining venue inside the Reed Union Building (RUB). The campus website posted an alert: "Threats issued to campus. Shelter in place. Avoid Reed Building. Campus operations suspended until further notice." Students who were in the Reed Union Building were moved to Erie Hall while police conducted a sweep. A spokesman emphasized that authorities did not believe there was an imminent threat, but operations were suspended out of caution. By afternoon, Erie News Now confirmed that normal campus operations had resumed. The incident is an early documented threat-of-violence alert from a Penn State branch campus and predates the much larger 2018 University Park bomb-threat archive entry in this collection. It also illustrates the multi-channel coordination challenge of campus alerts in the mid-2010s, when the website, Facebook, and PSUAlert SMS systems sometimes carried slightly different messages.
Analysis

Key Findings

The verbatim alert text ('Threats issued to campus. Shelter in place. Avoid Reed Building. Campus operations suspended until further notice.') is preserved word-for-word in CBS Pittsburgh's contemporaneous coverage
The threat specifically targeted Bruno's Cafe inside the Reed Union Building, a campus dining venue
Penn State Behrend used two distinct verbs across channels: 'Shelter in place' on the website vs. 'Evacuate now' on Facebook, illustrating cross-channel inconsistency
Students inside the Reed Union Building were relocated to Erie Hall during the sweep
Normal campus operations resumed the same day, with no device or suspect found
Outcome
Police completed a sweep of the Reed Union Building and surrounding facilities and found no threat. Students who had been inside the Reed Union Building were moved to Erie Hall as a precaution. Campus operations resumed by the afternoon.
Provenance

Sources

Every claim on this page is meant to be checkable. Open the links below (and the Verify this quote control under each confirmed alert) to read the original university, news, or archive page yourself. Hostnames are shown so you can see where you are going; archived copies survive when live pages move or disappear. See also our methodology.

  1. News
    Penn State Behrend Closed After Threat (CBS Pittsburgh)
    cbsnews.com
    archived copy
  2. News
    Normal campus operations resume after threats force Penn State Behrend to evacuate building (Erie News Now)
    erienewsnow.com
    archived copy
  3. Official
    Reed Union Building (Penn State Behrend)
    behrend.psu.edu
    archived copy
  4. Official
    Bruno's Cafe (Penn State Behrend LiveOn)
    liveon.psu.edu
    archived copy
  5. Official
    Verbatim text of Penn State Behrend's official Facebook post on February 6, 2015; the Facebook URL slug spells out the a
    facebook.com
    archived copy
Cite this case

Campus Alert Archive. "Penn State Erie, The Behrend College: Phoned threat targeting a cafe in the Reed Union Building prompts shelter-in-place." Incident of February 6, 2015. Added May 2026; last updated July 2026. https://campusalertarchive.com/case/penn-state-behrend-brunos-cafe-threat-2015-02-06/

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Alert text quoted on this page remains the work of the issuing institution; the archive is a secondary source.

Tags
threat-of-violencephoned-threatpenn-state-behrendpennsylvaniaeriebranch-campusshelter-in-placereed-union-buildingbrunos-cafe2015
Added May 2026Updated July 2026Via ingestion