By Karen Vargo
Yellow police line captured the attention of students Friday as a false anthrax scare hit the Jesse Knight Humanities Building.
A suspicious letter with a white powdery substance was found Friday around 6 a.m. in 1003 JKHB, said Carri Jenkins, assistant to the president for university communications.
A student custodian discovered the suspicious materials while emptying the trash, Jenkins said.
On the outside of the letter were the words, 'Death to America, ' she said.
Jenkins said Risk Management sent the letter to the state lab to be analyzed for anthrax.
'We took every precaution and are now confident the letter does not contain anthrax,' she said.
The classroom was sealed off and all safety measures were followed, Jenkins said.
The student custodian wore latex gloves, did not touch the suspicious material, closed the classroom door and called University Police immediately, Jenkins said.
Jenkins said she affirmed her support of the student''s actions as they complied with the information bulletin sent to all BYU students and faculty concerning guidelines for handling suspicious mail.
The white powder and letter turned out to be part of a class presentation made Thursday, Jenkins said.
The students giving the presentation assumed throwing the materials in the garbage would not be of any consequence, she said
'This shows that at this time we need to be careful with what we put on printed material,' Jenkins said.
The teacher of the class, Mabel Williams, said students making the anthrax presentation did not intend to cause any trouble.
'It was totally innocent,' Williams said. 'They didn''t want to frighten anybody.'
Williams said the students were summarizing and giving their opinion on an article from the Spanish newspaper, 'El Pais,' about terrorism in America.
The letter the students used was a photocopy of an actual terrorist letter in the newspaper, she said.
'They brought the letter and white powder as a prop to make their presentation more real,' Williams said.
But although the substance was not anthrax, the dean of humanities said it was still important to take this incident seriously.
'Thousands of people occupy this building and move in and out of it every single day,' said Van Gessel, Dean of the College of Humanities. 'We didn''t want to put people at risk just because we assumed it might have been a hoax.'
Abbigale Roberts, 20, a junior from Shoshone, Idaho, majoring in geography, said she wasn''t worried about the anthrax scare even though she works in the Writing Lab across the hall from 1003 JKHB where the incident occurred.
'It''s most likely another false alarm,' Roberts said. 'If it was serious, they''d evacuate the entire building like they did in the buildings where anthrax was found in the East.'
Roberts said she feels she might be at risk in February with the Olympics, but not now.
'Provo is one of the safest places,' she said.