Virginia Tech Rattled by Online Threats

(March 18) -- The police insist the threats are not credible, but Virginia Tech is on edge.

Almost three years after 32 people were massacred on campus, the university has been threatened in e-mails and on YouTube videos about a second attack -- today.

In an open letter to the school Wednesday evening, Virginia Tech President Charles Steger said the e-mails were empty threats that the FBI says originated in Italy.

"While we take all threats seriously, these law enforcement authorities do not believe these communications represent a credible threat," he wrote. But Steger also said there would be heightened security on the campus today and acknowledged that "an overabundance of caution is appropriate." He said Virginia Tech police and the FBI were working with Italian authorities to find whoever is behind the threats.

Classes remained open today, but the campus was tense.

In October, authorities discovered a YouTube page with the name "nextvirgtechkiller." The postings, which have been removed by YouTube, were disturbing. One read, "The massacre is incoming," and another warned, "Next massacre is incoming," The Washington Post reported last year. In the past week, students and employees at Virginia Tech have received e-mails containing similar threats.

Adding to the tension was a spate of recent apartment break-ins on and near campus that some believe are related to the online threats. An e-mail obtained by Virginia Tech's newspaper, the Collegiate Times, suggested that some students who received the online threats also were victims of apartment break-ins.

In his e-mail, Steger insisted the connection was no more than a coincidence. "People are linking local events, such as alleged break-ins, with these threatening posts and e-mails, which are not borne out by the facts," he wrote.

But that didn't seem to calm the nerves of students and faculty on the campus, where the memories of Seung-Hui Cho's rampage shootings are still fresh.

In a letter to the Collegiate Times Wednesday, student body President Brandon Carroll slammed university administrators for not taking the threats more seriously and said Thursday's classes should have been optional.

"Students are legitimately being targeted," he wrote. "The e-mail was sent out the afternoon before March 18. The specific day we were threatened."

Carroll said he was afraid to attend class today. "As a student I am fearful going to class tomorrow, but with attendance, quizzes, tests, and projects, class is required," he wrote.

On April 16, 2007, Cho shot to death 32 people, most of them fellow students, and then turned the gun on himself.