concordia bomb threat – The Concordian

The university and different student organizations give their take on how the situation was handled Wednesday morning

Less than a week after there was a bomb threat which targeted Concordia’s Muslim community, some organizations at Concordia community are looking back at how the university handled the situation.

“I feel like the administration has not taken the right initiatives,” said Eamon Toohey, a member of Solidarity Concordia, a group working to make the university a more sustainable and equitable socio-economic system. Toohey believes the university’s administration could have made better decisions concerning students’ safety, like what the Concordia Student Union (CSU) proposed, which was to create an amnesty for students to miss classes for the rest of the week.

Concordia spokesperson Chris Mota believes the university was responsive to the threat on Wednesday morning. “We did everything according to the book. We brought together our emergency team, we contacted the police who were on site very quickly and we did an assessment on the level of danger,” she said. “We made the decision to evacuate two of the downtown buildings because of their mention in the letter.”

Mota told The Concordian that, if any other threats are made, the university will respond accordingly, as they did last week. “We are very fortunate that it was a hoax, but we do absolutely take a threat seriously, and we have a solid, committed security team working hard in the university to deal with it.”

The Hall building (H), the Engineering, Computer Science, Visual Arts (EV) and the Guy-de Maisonneuve (GM) building were evacuated rapidly on Wednesday morning, at approximately 11:30 a.m.

“The JSMB building wasn’t closed because it was not targeted in the letter,” Mota said. “Our experts, who evaluated the risk on campus, said that there was [no threat] for this particular [building].” Mota said the university will discuss ways to ensure security of the Muslim community Tuesday morning.

As a response to last week’s threats and other recent attacks against the Muslim communities throughout Montreal and Quebec, such as the shooting at the Quebec City mosque on Jan. 29, the CSU announced on Monday via Facebook they would collect donations at each workshop during their Anti-Consumerism Week. “All of the money collected will go towards the National Council of Canadian Muslims, an organization that advises and advocates on behalf of Canadian Muslims and others who have experienced violations of their human rights and civil liberties,” it was mentioned on the post.

“[The] CSU has been encouraging people to use resources available to them off-and-on campus through a living Google document which has been disseminated through our networks,” general coordinator of the CSU, Lucinda Marshall-Kiparissis told The Concordian. The union encouraged their staff to not come to the office on Thursday and Friday “if they did not feel safe on campus while still compensating them for scheduled hours, if they did opt to not come in,” she said.

The CSU’s current goal is to get the university to offer universal academic amnesty for students who missed class, assignments, exams or other academic activity from Wednesday to Friday. “The university decided to only encourage professors to offer academic amnesty to their students, but only for Wednesday from the evacuation time onwards and only for classes held in the evacuated buildings,” said Marshall-Kiparissis.

According to Marshall-Kiparissis, many of the CSU members still feel unsafe on campus and feel like the way the university handled the situation was incomplete. “My colleagues and I, at this point, will be trying to make this a Senate issue at their meeting next week.”

The CSU is still working with the Concordia community, including the university, the Muslim Student Association (MSA) and other groups to plan different courses of action and support in relation to what happened last week.

Additionally, the Arts and Science Federation of Associations (ASFA) will present a motion related to the bomb threat at their upcoming council meeting this Thursday. ASFA published a statement last Wednesday morning in support with the Muslim community. “We respect and recognize the diversified experiences of and barriers faced by all students at Concordia and, as per our anti-racism position, condemn all acts of discrimination and terrorism,” it said in the letter.

SPVM spotted inside the Hall building. Photo by Ana Hernandez.

Julia Sutera Sardo, VP of Internal Affairs and Administration told The Concordian ASFA’s Advocacy Committee and the Women’s Studies Student Association reached out to MSA planning future events with them to help Muslim students. “They responded that they were overwhelmed with support and they will let us know shortly,” said Sutera Sardo.

The Concordian contacted the MSA about any plans going forward, but they did not respond before publication time.

Bail hearing postponed

The bail hearing for Hisham Saadi, the 47-year-old man who is charged with carrying out the bomb threat letter, has been postponed to Wednesday, March 8, according to CBC News. The hearing was originally scheduled for last Friday but was pushed to Monday. The newly postponed date was requested after Saadi’s lawyer asked for time to review new evidence from the Crown in relation to the bomb threat against Muslims that closed three Concordia university buildings, according to the same source.

Saadi was arrested at his Cote-des-Neiges apartment early Thursday morning. The apartment building was evacuated while police searched for explosives on Thursday, but none were found. Saadi is reportedly a PhD student in economics, according to CBC News.

Buildings evacuated due to letter threatening Muslim students at Concordia

Concordia University has taken a number of security measures after a letter was sent to the Concordia radio station CJLO and Muslim Student Association (MSA), among other groups, threatening to plant a bomb in the EV and Hall buildings of Concordia’s downtown campus on March 1.

The measures include an evacuation of the threatened buildings, shutting down the Concordia tunnel system, and cancelling classes and academic activities in the GM building. The JMSB building and the Webster library are still open for student use.

The letter, which was sent by the “Concordia chapter” of the Council of Conservative Citizens of Canada (C4) claimed that, “between March 1st at noon and March 3rd at 2 pm, [they] will DETONATE once per day small artisanal amateur explosive devices that [they] planted on two floors of the Hall bldg and one floor of the EV bldg”.

The group claimed that this decision was prompted by the fact “Donald Trump is now in office south of our border” and that they would not tolerate the “behavior” of Muslim students. The group claims the proposed violence will continue until Concordia halts “religious activities of all kinds” on campus—but later says their intention is for the university to halt Muslim religious activity specifically. The group claims the bombs are not “meant to kill anybody,” but are intended to cause injury to Muslim students, and “some non-Moslems may be collateral damage.”

The timing of the bombs correlate with Concordia’s Islamic Awareness Week, where, according to the organization’s website, the MSA was planning on “[sparing] no expense” to “clear up any misconceptions about Islam” with a number of displays and workshops in the 7th floor lounge of the Hall Building, an area often used for worship and religious activities.

According to Rami Yahia, Internal Affairs Coordinator of the CSU, the MSA and CSU are in contact about new security measures going forward to help the MSA. The CSU stands in solidarity with Muslim students and all victims of Islamophobia, said Yahia.

Upon receiving the letter at approximately 9:46 a.m. on Wednesday, the CJLO news editor and managing editor reported it to the police.

For hours, campus activity carried on as usual. Students were not publicly informed of the threat, and all floors and buildings remained open. However, numerous security guards made rounds through the Hall Building, checking garbage cans and taking note of possible suspicious activity.

At approximately 11:30 a.m., an alarm went off throughout the building, and an overhead voice warned students to promptly leave and “get away from the building.”

Despite this, the initial response from students in the Hall Building’s 7th floor lounge was far from panic—it took a few minutes for many students to respond, and pockets of students remained in the building, talking amongst themselves. Even the Green Beat Cafe continued to serve customers.

The casual response was likely due to the fact it had not been publicly announced that the nature of the evacuation was a bomb threat. Jonathon Clarke was one of many students who remained unworried by the initial alarms.

“Usually, in evacuations, there’s a continuous beeping,” Clarke said. “I’m honestly more worried about the sound system, the response to future emergency situations.”

Eventually, even the most reluctant students were forced to evacuate, and the Hall and EV buildings, as well as the downtown campus’ tunnel system, was shut down to everyone except security and police.

The Guy-Concordia metro station was briefly shut down, with metro cars not stopping at the station. Once it resumed to regular service, the indoor entrance from the university remained inaccessible.

“I don’t know what happened,” said student Tom DaMagnez, who was in the Hall Building to hand in a midterm assignment. “I went in and immediately people told me I had to leave. I thought it was a fire.”

“We are shocked that such hateful and violent expression of intolerance has targeted our community,” Concordia University said in a written statement. “There is no room for such threats in our society. Concordia is a university that embraces diversity as a key element of who we are. We will support each other and make sure we remain a welcoming, inclusive institution for all students, staff and faculty.”

Concordia officials have claimed that the evacuated buildings and classes may resume at 6 p.m., but this is subject to change. Security guards are currently monitoring the evacuated spaces, and students are warned to take caution and stay informed by checking the Concordia website for updated information.

With files from Gregory Todaro