Here's a story that I will most certainly never forget. During one of my early summers working with Rider University's Study Tours program we had an unfortunate set of circumstances arise that led us to change our itinerary with our students. 

Bomb threat

During one summer a bomb threat was inscribed on a bathroom stall in one of the academic buildings at Rider University. When something like this comes to your attention you have to take it seriously. This wasn't just any nonspecific threat, the inscription had a date on it and that date had not yet arrived.

Campus safety was called in and the police were alerted. Rider formulated a plan about what to do on that imminent day that loomed ahead of us. It was decided to evacuate all the camps, conferences, students, and personnel. It truly was the only option. Once there was a plan we started executing it.  

Fix It with Chocolate

Since our students were not from this country we couldn't easily send them home. Thus, we made plans to house them elsewhere. That place? A hotel near Hershey Park, PA. We evacuated the students the day before the threat and headed to Hershey. Yes, the Hershey that makes the delicious chocolate and other tasty treats. 

The night we arrived we went bowling with the students, and the following day we let them free in Hershey Park to enjoy the rides, games, and all that Hershey has to offer. It was a long day at the amusement park, but overall it was a very successful way to protect our students, even if it cost us a little extra.

Towards the end of the trip my supervisor bought a giant Hershey kiss as a gift to his boss, who had stayed behind that day to monitor the situation. He specifically had a message put on it that read: "Hope your day was a blast." At that point, the evacuation was a precautionary measure, and ultimately resulted in an extraordinary quiet day on campus. No bombs went off and all was well. 

The Police Arrive

After a long day in Hershey Park we attempted to collect our students. This is always a fairly chaotic thing no matter where we go. It's more like an organized chaos, but to the untrained eye probably looks very much like chaos. As buses fill up and students and leaders are accounted for we release the buses to head back to campus. Two buses depart with ease. Every bus that departs always made me breathe a little easier. With each busload that leaves it's approximately 50 more students accounted for. 

We still had 3 missing students about 45 minutes after our scheduled meeting time. We patiently waited in the parking lot to try and locate them. We alerted the other buses that had departed to start checking their buses to see if they had perhaps gotten on the wrong bus and were miscounted. 

In the early days of Study Tours (2009-2011 or so), there were very few students that carried cell phones that worked internationally. This made it extremely difficult to locate them. All we could really do was wait. 

While we waited we enjoyed a concert. The Police (the band) were jamming out to Roxanne and Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic. Another 45 minutes went by and our concerns were heightened. Were the students lost? Were they abducted? Were they detained? We tried everything we could think of to locate them. We sent our staff back into the park to try to find them, we alerted park security they were missing, and we asked other students if they had seen them earlier in the day. 

Finally, they arrived back at the buses, with Police t-shirts from the concert. They were quite pleased with the entertainment they had seen that day. They informed us they had bought tickets from someone outside the venue, entered the concert, and thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

At this point, we were beyond irate at their decision to scalp tickets to the concert. Ironically enough our anger was drowned out by Message in a Bottle... "I'll send an S-O-S to the world, I hope that someone gets my, I hope that someone gets my message in a bottle." Our message to them might have gotten to them faster if delivered by way of a bottle than all the other things we tried.  

As per usual, all's well that ends well in Study Tours Land as I like to call it. Looking back, we can only laugh at the situation. I still stand by my stance, I've returned 100% of the students that visited us to their respective countries, even if I lost them somewhere along the way.