A bomb threat earlier today at the Student Recreation and Wellness Center has prompted students to make several jokes about it.
On Twitter, students have ended a lot of their tweets with the phrase #BombSoHardUniversity, a reference to the "Ball So Hard University" meme started after an NFL linebacker gave the fake school name as his alma mater in November.
Students have also made several memes and posted them to the Ball State University meme page on Facebook.
Kerri Pickel, a psychological science professor, compares the situation to tornado warnings in the Midwest. When multiple alerts are sent out, people take them less seriously. This is called warning fatigue.
Pickel added tornado warnings relate to the bomb threat because people have learned from past experience that when a warning is sent out, nothing usually happens after that.
"It costs nothing to make a threat," Pickel said. "It's actually probably a lot of effort to make a bomb and plant one and nobody's going to find it. It's much easier to just threaten that you have a bomb."
Psychological science professor David Perkins said the situations are similar because few have been affected by either event. Because of this, people will assume that "it's like all those other times," he said.
Sophomore glass blowing major Kelsie Selch said she received an email notification about the threat. Selch went to Avon High School and said they have had a couple bomb threats in the past. Because of this, she said she was not really concerned about the threat at Ball State.
Perkins added that it would be unusual to actually have a bomb go off and that people live in a world that they believe is predictable and stable.
Joan Todd, executive director of public relations, said Ball State has several guidelines that require them to notify students by several means – by text, email and phone as quickly as possible.
"It's hard to quantify what too many [notifications] is," Todd said. "If we didn't notify, we could be criticized for not sending enough."
In addition to an email notification, senior Kate Terpening said she read students' tweets about the bomb threat.
"I think a lot of [students] thought it was a joke because all the campus buildings were still open so I don't know if anyone really took it that seriously," Terpening said. "But everyone was tweeting about it so they had to have been a little nervous."
Selch said she disapproves of the tweets that were sent about the threat and the jokes that were made.
"I think that's just dumb," she said. "Things happen. I think it's just immature to joke about it."
Although the people who make bomb threats do so for different reasons, Perkins said, in general, they are people who want to make an effect on the world around them. The problem is they do not have a way to do this in a positive way.
Perkins said the rationale behind such threats result from feelings of inadequacy.
"This is a way to turn the tables on everyone else, to say ‘Well I'm important enough to cause all this attention and disruption.'"
Perkins added that those who simply make a threat without actually placing a bomb will often observe the effects of their threat.
"What they really want is to feel important," he said.
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