EDITORIAL — No joke

A few days ago a university in Cebu City was shut down because of writing found in one of its walls that threatened harm to its students. Bomb-sniffing dogs were called to the school and searched it up and down but, thankfully, found nothing.

Around the same time a 13-year-old Grade 10 student in Jaen, Nueva Ecija, sent a threatening message to the Lambakin National High School. The suspect was found out to be an honor student who said she was suffering from depression.

Also in Nueva Ecija, this time in Llanera, an 18-year-old student was arrested after threatening to bomb the San Felipe Integrated School. He said he posted the threat as a joke.

Are we to think of such incidents, by this we mean threats aimed at the students of a school, as the new “normal”?

What is leading students to make such threats? We hope doing so isn’t part of those “challenges” that became the trend for a while in social media.

So with the Jaen incident, it would seem that making threats isn’t only in the ambit of troublemakers and never-do-wells, it would seem that model students may also have momentary lapses of judgment leading to rash action. Or maybe it was a decision that was really thought through to achieve an objective?

Despite their young age, students must be made to understand the gravity of calling in a threat. They must be made to understand that making a threat is not a joke. Especially when you threaten a school where many people can get hurt or even killed.

There’s nothing funny about threatening to cause property damage or injure or kill people.

Records will show a 100% of bomb threats are fake. No one will go through the trouble to plant a bomb then tell people to get out of harm’s way. But whenever someone calls to say a bomb will go off, we really cannot take any chances and have to make sure we get rid of it, even if we aren’t sure it exists.

And that’s the rub, because we have to check for the threat, we have to shut down schools, we have to usher people to safety. That causes disruptions we don’t need.