Terror Alert in South Loop
While I was watching The Graduate in my Aesthetics of Film class, a woman came in instructing everyone in our lecture theater to "calmly and immediately evacuate the building." Thankfully the class was on the 6th floor, so I was able to get outside pretty quickly. I walked out into a crowd of confused and nervous students, me definitely being one of them. Students were asking security guards questions but they were not giving answers. I did not see any city police or official authorities. Once outside my building at 624 S. Michigan, I looked down the street towards 600 S. Michigan, and saw that people were gathering outside another Columbia College building. Then some woman stood up on one of the large planters in front of our building and said that "We need everyone to move away from the buildings and leave the area. Have a nice weekend."
I called Luke to check the news to see if anything was going on that would have caused the panic, but nothing was out of the ordinary. I caught up with a woman a recoginized from school and asked her what she knew. She told me that she had never seen anything like that before and that ALL Columbia buildings to be evacuated (17 buildings in and around South Loop). We talked some more and agreed that it must have been some sort of non-specific threat. We told each other to be safe and to have a nice weekend.
Thank God It's Friday.
I was just listening to Ben Kweller - Commerce, TX
