SOUTH ROYALTON — Vermont Law School evacuated its campus Thursday morning after receiving what administrators regarded as threatening messages directed at the “campus and community,” according to a statement from the school.
No one was injured and the campus was reopened to staff around noon after police investigated the incident.
VLS sent out a text alert mid-morning that said, “Please leave campus immediately due to unforeseen circumstances.”
Later in the morning, VLS Dean and President Thomas McHenry wrote that overnight “Vermont Law School and some of its professors and staff received threatening email and phone messages directed to our campus and community. Given the nature of the messages, our leadership triggered our emergency protocols, including evacuating the VLS campus.”
State and Royalton police responded, and Royalton Police Chief Loretta Stalnaker said that a student, upset about issues in their own life, had sent an angry email to a professor the night before. The message had been shared by members of the faculty, some of whom found it threatening and called the police, she said.
Stalnaker said the email was “ambiguous” and that police did not believe there was a threat to the school.
“I believe it was blown out of proportion,” she said.
The school is not fully operating in person because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but several people including some faculty and staff, were on campus during the evacuation, according to a statement from the school.
VLS spokeswoman Nicole Ravlin declined to say more about the nature of the message or who sent it. She added that the incident was not connected to a recent, controversial mural at VLS intended to highlight the state’s role in the Underground Railroad that the school has decided to remove.