Sarah Headley, Aaron Keck, and UNC journalism student Annick Joseph contributed to this story.

On Thursday, UNC went into high alert after an anonymous post on the social media site Yik Yak suggested there might be a bomb in the Pit that afternoon.

Fortunately it turned out to be a false alarm – and police were able to identify the poster and make an arrest.

That arrest took place in Rita Balaban’s Economics 101 class in Carroll Hall 111. Balaban had seen a message from Alert Carolina on her way to class – but that was all she knew when she walked in that morning.

“When I got into the classroom I asked the students, ‘What’s the alert about?’” she says. “They filled me in that there was some kind of bomb threat…and so I was a little disturbed to begin with, because I’ve always thought (that) if something’s going to happen on campus, it’s going to happen in Carroll 111 because of the sheer numbers (of people in the classroom). It’s crossed my mind multiple times.”

Balaban says the arrest happened during the last three minutes of class. Authorities pulled her aside beforehand to let her know one of her students would be apprehended.

“As I’m teaching, I see men in black appearing at the doors in the back of the room,” she says. “One of them approaches me and says, ‘do you mind stepping out?’ – (and) all they said is, ‘there’s a student in your class that we’re going to apprehend after class’…

“My first reaction was, whoever made this bomb threat is sitting in this classroom right now, and that was pretty disturbing…(and) honest to God, you just saw men in black. To me, that’s all I saw.”

Oddly, it’s not the first time Balaban’s class has been interrupted this year: Balaban is also the professor who apprehended a pair of streakers who ran through her classroom last month.

This time, like last time, she says she tried to play it cool.

“I honestly didn’t see them grab anybody…but I was trying to act cool, just talking to the students who had questions about monetary policy,” she says. “It was funny – my chair came into Carroll 111 right afterward and said, ‘hey, more excitement going on?’ And I’m like, ‘you don’t know what’s happened?’ He wasn’t even aware of the alert…

“So some of us, we don’t even know what’s going on. If I had not looked at my phone (before class), I never would have known.”

Rita Balaban spoke to UNC journalism student Annick Joseph shortly after the incident.

 

The Yik Yak post turned out to be a false threat, of course, but Balaban says it still should be taken seriously.

“It’s not a joke,” she says. “This is too serious, too serious. (After) Florida State, Virginia Tech, Columbine, and (Sandy Hook), this is not to be taken lightly…

“If you call in a bomb threat, it’s a federal offense,” she continues. “I don’t know how they treat it (with) social media, but…there must have been a dozen (police officers) circling my room.”

Jay Eubank is the director of career services at the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He says he agrees with Balaban.

“People need to realize that there are consequences to what you say, (whether) you think it’s anonymous or not,” he says. “Yelling fire in a theater, or joking ‘I’ve got a bomb in my suitcase, ha ha’ – no. There should be consequences to that.”

Police arrested Daniel Fischbeck, an 18-year-old student from Charlotte. He’s been charged with making a false bomb report in a public building, which is in fact a felony offense.

Listen to more eyewitness comments here.