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A bag full of sand prompted an evacuation of Lawson Hall Wednesday after an instructor reported it as suspicious to police.
More than 100 students and faculty exited classrooms before police blocked off the building and investigated what they initially called a "suspicious package."
Police said a student dropped off a red gym bag behind a trashcan in a Lawson Hall classroom at about 11 a.m. and walked away. Some students reported the incident to administration of justice instructor Ralph Jones, who was teaching a class at the time.
"The way the students described this person who stepped inside the doorway and dropped the bag behind the trashcan and then, in their words, furtively and quickly left the room just raised my suspicions," Jones said.
Jones, who worked for 17 years in the Brazos County (Texas) Sheriff's Department before coming to SIUC, said he evacuated his class and talked with other professors in the building about the bag.
Lt. Harold Tucker of the SIUC Police said the department received a call that a white male set down a bag and left.
"Them seeing that as suspicious, we responded," Tucker said.
Tucker said the whole building was cleared and a perimeter of officers was set up around the building to keep students from entering.
The student who set down the bag was Mark McArthur, a senior from Elmhurst studying radio and television.
Tucker said McArthur came to the scene shortly afterwards to claim the bag and tell police that the sand was for a class project.
"The student who left the bag came back to us, noticed what was going on and very apologetically said, 'I'm sorry, but that was a bag of sand,'" Tucker said.
McArthur, who was going to use the sand as a visual aide for his international marketing class project, said the bag weighed 60 pounds and he didn't want to carry it between classes.
"I had a class beforehand and I really didn't want to bring a 60 pound bag of sand around," he said. "I only had one class in between, so it was only there for like 45 minutes before people started getting all antsy about it."
Jones said he believed McArthur acted the way he did to not disturb the class, but it would have been better to tell the instructor about the bag.
"It would have been just as easy to come down and show me what was in there and why he was leaving it in the room," Jones said.
Tucker said no action would be taken against McArthur.
"From what we're determining right now there wasn't any intent of harm," he said.
McArthur said he thought some repercussions might arise due to the recent events at Virginia Tech.
"There might be something because people like to overreact after something like that," he said. "I'm hoping nothing happens because I really wasn't out to hurt anybody."
dwenger@siu.edu 536-3311 ext. 258
