Campus Alert Archive
Penn State Behrend

"Threats Issued to Campus. Shelter in Place": Penn State Behrend Empties the Reed Union Building

PAthreat of violenceemergency notificationhigh confidence

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
~4,400 studentsPSUAlert Behrend
Confirmed Timeline

Alert Sequence

3 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 ALERTWebsite
Verified verbatimVerbatim text of the alert posted on Penn State Behrend's website, as reported by CBS Pittsburgh and Erie News Now114 chars
Threats issued to campus. Shelter in place. Avoid Reed Building. Campus operations suspended until further notice.
The verbatim alert text was posted directly on the school's website and quoted in CBS Pittsburgh and Erie News Now coverage
The 113-character message used 4 telegraphic clauses — typical of mid-2010s campus alert design that prioritized brevity over context
The Reed Union Building (RUB) is the campus student center; Bruno's Cafe is a dining venue inside the building
UPDATEFacebook
Verified verbatimVerbatim text of Penn State Behrend's official Facebook post on February 6, 2015 — the Facebook URL slug spells out the alert text word-for-word89 chars
Threats made to Bruno's Cafe. Evacuate now. Avoid Reed Union Building. Watch for updates.
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
Approximate reconstruction147 chars
Penn State Behrend Alert: Campus has been cleared. Police have completed their sweep and no threat was found. Normal campus operations will resume.

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

The Erie News Now headline confirmed 'Normal campus operations resume after threats force Penn State Behrend to evacuate building'
The all-clear was issued the same day, indicating the sweep took less than a full school day
No suspect or device was reported to have been located
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 notable as one of the first widely-documented threat-of-violence alerts 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

  1. News
    Penn State Behrend Closed After Threat (CBS Pittsburgh)
    cbsnews.com
  2. News
    Normal campus operations resume after threats force Penn State Behrend to evacuate building (Erie News Now)
    erienewsnow.com
  3. Official
    Reed Union Building (Penn State Behrend)
    behrend.psu.edu
  4. Official
    Bruno's Cafe (Penn State Behrend LiveOn)
    liveon.psu.edu
Tags
threat-of-violencephoned-threatpenn-state-behrendpennsylvaniaeriebranch-campusshelter-in-placereed-union-buildingbrunos-cafe2015
Added May 2026Updated May 2026Via ingestion