Around 3 p.m. on Tuesday, November 29, three buildings were evacuated at the University of Nebraska at Kearney campus due to a suspicious package. The Fine Arts Building, Cushing Coliseum, and the Health and Sports Center were cleared out for the safety of the students and staff. At 6:30 p.m., law enforcement arrived and scoped the area for any devices or threats, finding nothing. Students and faculty members were allowed to recover their belongings around 7 p.m. All night classes and activities were cancelled due to the incident.

This was not the first time UNK has been privy to suspicious activity. In 2014, a freshman from Ogallala threatened to use an explosive device not once but three times on the university’s campus. The first two did not cause any evacuations, while the third one forced law enforcement to evacuate the library and search it for explosives, although none were found. The student made these threats through a social media platform called Yik Yak. While the yaks written are anonymous to other users, Yik Yak headquarters still has access to the IP address and name of their users. The student was arrested and charged with threatened use of explosives, a class four felony. He was later sentenced to 90 years in jail with a two day credit and two years probation. The judge who heard his case, the honorable John Rademacher, said “You terrorized a campus and a community. Obviously, it’s clear you didn’t think through the ramifications of your actions.”