Emmaus High Bomb Hoaxes Must Stop, Student Says

Special to Emmaus Patch By Chrissy Cilento, Emmaus High School Senior

I logged onto Facebook Wednesday night and was bombarded with status after status about the third attempted bomb threat on Emmaus High School. My classmates' posts were all pretty much along the same line: "Seriously? Three times? It's not funny anymore."

I'll admit -- the first time I got the call that the school would be closed for a bomb threat, I probably wasn't as crestfallen as I should have been... I may or may not have done a small celebratory dance after the call ended and rubbed it in my little brother's face that he had school and I didn't. 

Now, however, the joke’s getting old. After-school activities are inconvenienced, schedules are out of whack, the administration is more than annoyed, and students are getting tired. I don’t know if the culprit is expecting everyone to be grateful or hail him/her as a martyr, but from what I can tell, the students are just as unhappy about the continued threats as the staff is.

As great as a day off can be every now and then, these bomb threat days come with a price -- making them up at the end of the school year. Anyone who’s rejoicing about the lack of school now isn’t thinking about the fact that these days don’t just disappear from the calendar. We have to replace them in the spring. I think I speak for the entirety of Emmaus High School when I say that I’d much rather be stuck in Calculus on a cloudy, March day than a sunny afternoon in June when a pool is calling my name.

Aside from the inconvenience of making up lost days, I think a lot of students generally regard the threats as stupid. Who’s sick enough to joke about bombing their own school? While they may be laughing now, in the end the kids behind the threats are just going to get into a ridiculous amount of trouble. What’s interesting to me is that students show little remorse at turning in the culprit. Most students I’ve talked to have said that if they knew who was behind it they would absolutely turn them in. At this point, any practical joke lookouts on the threats have vanished. The school’s money and time have been wasted -- who are these threats really benefitting? No one.

Although the threats have turned into a kind of laughing matter, I think it’s important that people not take them so lightly. The “bombings” have been so frequent and so innocuous that they’re no longer taken seriously. While of course it’s good that no one has actually tried to bomb EHS, it makes me nervous for a potential “boy-who-cried-wolf” syndrome -- my mom pointed out the thought to me, and it’s worried me since. Are these fake threats sort of lulling us into a false sense of security and making us feel like there’s no danger, until one day a threat is real and no one gives it credence? Maybe it sounds like a conspiracy theory, but even so, I encourage everyone not to treat the threats so lightly.

Although ultimately the most harm they may cause us is a shortened summer, for now we should act like these threats are for real. The administration is treating them as though they are, and the least the student body and community can do is support their efforts while they work to keep us safe.

Chrissy Cilento, a senior at Emmaus High School, plans to study journalism in college. She is a periodic contributor to Patch.