Police and Fire units evacuated Collis Center on Friday afternoon when a birthday scavenger hunt went awry and Collis workers mistook a clue wrapped in a paper bag for a bomb.
Word of a bomb scare spread quickly throughout the campus via BlitzMail, but after more than three hours of investigating by local and state police the source of the scare became known.
"It was a caveman costume," said Joe Edelman '99, who planned the action adventure birthday for his friend Nate Huckel-Bauer '99. "It had a big furry beard and a moustache. There was a flannel shirt in there too, and blue jeans."
The costume was packaged in a brown paper bag and attached with duct tape to the ceiling of the elevator in Collis on Friday afternoon in preparation for the birthday game.
"It just didn't occur to them that it would look like a bomb," said Danielle Poulin '99, who was also involved in planning the game.
But the celebrating seniors were wrong, and when someone in the Career Services Office noticed the suspicious package dangling from the ceiling of the elevator, Amy MacNeil, assistant director of Collis, was contacted immediately.
MacNeil contacted Safety and Security, who in turn called in the Hanover Police Department.
Police and Fire units were dispatched to Collis at 3:50 p.m., at which time the assembled officials consulted and decided to evacuate the building and contact the New Hampshire State Police Bomb Unit.
While the Police and Fire units stood by awaiting the arrival of a trooper from the bomb unit, Mark Hoffman, the director of Collis, walked around the building asking people to leave.
"People were very cooperative and friendly," MacNeil said.
Meanwhile, the party was still going strong, with the revelers completely oblivious to the commotion they had caused.
With walkie talkies and Nerf guns, and acting as spies, the party participants chased birthday boy Huckel-Bauer around campus, from the starting place -- Sanborn Library Tea -- to such locations as the bridge at the golf course, the tunnels from Carpenter Hall to Baker Library and the Bema.
When the party-goers were at the Bema, someone mentioned that Collis Center had been evacuated because of a suspicious package that could have been a bomb, Edelman said.
As soon as he and his friends realized that their game could have been the reason for the chaos, they drove directly to Collis where they found the doors bolted shut.
One party-goer contacted Safety and Security, Huckel-Bauer said.
Eventually, Huckel-Bauer was admitted to Collis where he found two Hanover police officers taking measurements of the elevator and the floor.
"Once the College Investigator found out that it was part of a scavenger hunt birthday party, he was not worried about it any more," Huckel-Bauer said. "Once the police understood the situation, they said there was no violation of federal or local law."
However, he noted that the officers seemed somewhat upset that the bomb scare had needlessly taken up a lot of their time.
"I guess it was a logical and reasonable reaction," Huckel-Bauer said.
Huckel-Bauer went to the police station to make a routine statement. He said he was allowed to leave by 8:30 p.m. and return to his birthday celebration.
