Students enter Emerson Hall to take their final examinations after it had been deemed safe by University officials. 
 
 UPDATED: December 17, 2013, at 3:05 a.m. 
 
 An apparently unfounded emailed threat of live explosives in three academic buildings and one dormitory near the center of Harvard’s campus on Monday morning prompted exam cancellations in several large courses, the descent of federal, state, and local law enforcement, and a White House briefing. 
 
 Hundreds of Harvard College students were prematurely roused from bed or abruptly interrupted from their final examinations shortly after 9 a.m., when Harvard University Police sounded alarms in four campus buildings. The evacuations of the Science Center, Emerson Hall, Sever Hall, and Thayer Hall sent scores of students into Harvard Yard and the Science Center Plaza, leaving police to search the premises. With the developing situation attracting national media attention, little happened as a nearly six hour investigation yielded no explosive contraband and authorities issued the all-clear shortly before 3 in the afternoon. 
 
 According to department spokesperson Steven G. Catalano, the threat came in an emailed message to an affiliate of HUPD that was timestamped, according to Executive Vice President Katherine N. Lapp, at 8:40 a.m. 
 
 A Harvard spokesperson who declined to be identified confirmed that the email received by the HUPD affiliate was “nearly identical” to an email received at 8:45 a.m. by Crimson President Robert S. Samuels ’14. Under the subject line “bombs placed around campus,” the email to Samuels read, “bombs placed in: science center [and] sever hall [and] emerson hall [and] thayer hall. 2/4. guess correctly. be quick for they will go off soon.” 
 
 After the HUPD affiliate read the emailed threat, the department immediately dispatched officers because the email specifically named its targets, according to the Harvard spokesperson. Simultaneously with the dispatch, the spokesperson said, HUPD drafted a MessageMe alert to the Harvard community, the first of more than 10 emails that College students would receive from Harvard officials throughout the day. Repeatedly in those messages, administrators stressed that they were acting out of an “abundance of caution” in an effort to keep the campus community safe. 
 
 By the time that first MessageMe alert was sent at 9:02 a.m., HUPD officers had already started evacuating the targeted buildings. Another alert, at 9:13 a.m., reported that HUPD and Cambridge Police were on the scene and investigating. By noon, state and federal authorities had arrived on the scene, and President Obama had been briefed on the situation, according to a White House spokesperson. 
 
 Not long after the building evacuations, authorities closed Harvard Yard. Students evacuated from the Science Center who had initially thought the disturbance was nothing more than an ill-timed fire drill were directed to an Annenberg Hall that quickly overflowed from the combination of the usual breakfast rush and those displaced from exam rooms and bedrooms. 
 
 Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay M. Harris soon joined the students in Annenberg, where he would later be joined by University President Drew G. Faust and interim College Dean Donald H. Pfister. After discussing the situation with a number of teaching staff, Harris climbed on a table and announced that all of the exams scheduled that morning in the three affected classroom buildings had been cancelled. During his impromptu speech, Harris did not settle definitively the question of whether cancelled exams would need to be made up. 
 
 Throughout the morning, students with exams scheduled for the day received emails from teaching fellows and professors, many of whom expressed uncertainty about how their courses would be graded, and if students would be required to make up exams. With three major academic buildings still shuttered, students slated to sit for finals at 2 p.m. were cast into an uncomfortable holding pattern. Just after 12 p.m., the University notified parents of undergraduates of the ongoing situation. 
 
 With the search turning up no evidence of explosives, life in the Yard began to return to normalcy as the day progressed. The Yard reopened to Yard residents before 11 a.m. And, at 12:40 p.m., Securitas guards stood by Johnston, Widener, Lamont, and the Science Center gates, allowing Harvard ID holders into the Yard. Shortly before noon, several dozen students could be found studying in Lamont Cafe, as well as in Lamont’s reading rooms. At least three others had fallen asleep, some at tables, others on couches. 
 
 Early in the afternoon, HUPD sent out alerts announcing that Emerson and Thayer, and then Sever and Harvard Yard, were safe for return, but officers continued to search the Science Center, forcing the cancellation of afternoon exams set to be held there. In an email to undergraduates just minutes before 2 p.m. exams were scheduled to start, Administrative Board Secretary John “Jay” L. Ellison wrote that any students who felt unprepared to take their still-scheduled afternoon exams could be excused from the sitting. 
 
 Those who opted to forgo uncancelled afternoon exams, Ellison wrote, could choose to be graded on coursework to date, excluding the final, or to be evaluated on a pass/fail basis without penalty. In an email later in the afternoon, Ellison reiterated that the rest of the week’s exams remained scheduled. 
 
 Authorities finally cleared the Science Center at 2:44 p.m., effectively declaring an end to the campus scare. As of press time, Catalano would not comment on whether the investigation had turned up any suspects. 
 
 —Antonio Coppola, John P. Finnegan, and Dev A. Patel contributed to the reporting of this story. 
 
 —Staff writer Matthew Q. Clarida can be reached at matthew.clarida@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattClarida. ||||| CAMBRIDGE — Joe Palana had just sat down for the last exam of his first semester at Harvard Monday when alarm bells pierced the silence at Emerson Hall. Like others around him, the freshman from Rockland thought it was just a fire drill, so he left his bag. But he grabbed his coat. 
 
 That made him luckier than some of the hundreds of Harvard students and faculty who were displaced at 9 a.m. by a bomb scare and walked out in their shirtsleeves or without their university ID cards, only to be locked out for hours as law enforcement swept the campus over what officials called “unconfirmed reports of explosives.” 
 
 Continue reading below 
 
 Police ultimately found no suspicious devices, but the threat, which officials said came via e-mail, drew an array of emergency responders and a throng of reporters to Harvard, eight months after the attack on the Boston Marathon. In Washington, President Obama was briefed. 
 
 Related Photos Police investigate reports of explosives at Harvard 
 
 But the mood on campus seemed to shift quickly from fear toward curiosity, annoyance, or indifference, long before the last of the four evacuated buildings was deemed bomb-free around 3 p.m. Almost from the start, officials called the evacuation a result of “an abundance of caution,” and many students speculated that the threat was an exam-period hoax. 
 
 “My guess is someone is trying to cause mischief during finals week,” said Nathan Pflueger, a graduate student who had just arrived at his office at the Science Center when the alarm went off, prompting a mass exodus. 
 
 “Ten-to-one it’s an obnoxious effort to stop an exam today,” said sophomore Connor Harris, standing outside the center five hours later, yellow caution tape and a cluster of emergency vehicles still blocking the entrance. 
 
 Harris said the atmosphere was “nothing like” that of last April, when the university and surrounding area was on lockdown during the manhunt in Watertown for the Marathon bombing suspects. “People were quite frightened” then, he said. 
 
 Continue reading below 
 
 But possibly because it took place at Harvard, the threat Monday made news worldwide. Harris awakened to read not just a university emergency alert message but also a text from his parents in Connecticut, hoping he was safe. Standing on the blocked-off end of Kirkland Street, he read a news story on his phone about the threat, in German, on the website of Der Spiegel. 
 
 The threat targeted Emerson, Thayer, and Sever halls in Harvard Yard and the Science Center, just beyond the yard. 
 
 Thayer and Emerson reopened after four hours, Sever after five, and the Science Center after six hours, though a heightened police and security presence remained well into the afternoon. 
 
 After the evacuation, officials closed Harvard Yard to the public, restricting access to those with university IDs. 
 
 By 11, a few dozen students were waiting along Massachusetts Avenue to return through one of the limited-access gates. Despite the helicopters overhead and the power cords for satellite trucks running down the sidewalk, the mood was the usual end-of-semester mix of jubilation and anxiety, with little evident fear. 
 
 Michael Casciotti, shivering in shorts and flip-flops, was just trying to stay warm. 
 
 “I’m very cold,” said the freshman from Pennsylvania, who had ventured barefoot and bleary-eyed from his Thayer dorm room into the hall at the sound of the alarm. 
 
 “I left all my stuff in there, didn’t have any clothes on, so my friend gave me a sweater and flip-flops,” he said. 
 
 As the three-hour mark approached, Palana, the freshman from Rockland, remained displaced from his bag and his dorm room, in Thayer. He had decamped for an upperclass dorm far from the yard — “I wasn’t too concerned, [but] I had some friends that were pretty scared” — but wandered back toward Harvard Yard for lunch, spotting a friend waving from the third floor of a dorm just inside the gate. A federal Homeland Security sport utility vehicle had just raced past, sirens blaring. But the friend, shirtless, appeared unconcerned. 
 
 “Hey, Adam!” Palana called. “You look not very cold. It’s not so warm out here.” 
 
 Palana glanced at his phone and saw an update: His exam had been rescheduled for a choice of 6:30 p.m. Monday night or the third week of next semester. 
 
 His classmate Emma Woo cringed; Monday’s new timing coincided with her chorus concert, so she would have to study again over break. “Dude, that’s the worst,” Palana said. 
 
 A Harvard e-mail advised students that afternoon exams would be held as scheduled, with exams in affected buildings moved but not canceled. 
 
 The Faculty of Arts and Sciences message advised students that if they felt unable to take their exams for any reason, “including anxiety, loss of study time, lack of access to material and belongings left in one of the affected buildings, or travel schedule,” they could skip the exam and take a grade based on coursework to date. 
 
 That prompted a group of graduate students to begin drafting a reply cautioning that the approach would “set up a new and dangerous precedent on campus, that bomb threats will get students out of final exam responsibilities.” 
 
 “We see the note as analogous to negotiating with terrorists,” doctoral student Alek Chakroff said in an e-mail to the Globe. “We sympathize with students who are distressed by the threats, especially in the wake of the Marathon bombings. But in responding to these threats, we think excusing students from exams should be the exception, not the rule.” 
 
 A subsequent Harvard e-mail reiterated the policy for students who skipped Monday afternoon exams but clarified that anyone who felt unable to take another exam this week as a result of the bomb threat would need evaluation and documentation from student mental health services. ||||| A Harvard student trying to get out of a final exam admitted to the FBI that he sent a bomb threat that forced the university to evacuate multiple buildings and rattled the campus, federal officials said Tuesday. 
 
 Instead of going home for winter break, 20-year-old Eldo Kim was arrested Tuesday and held overnight on federal bomb hoax charges. He is scheduled to appear in US District Court on Wednesday, according to US Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz’s office. 
 
 The FBI said Kim sent an anonymous e-mail to Harvard officials, campus police, and others at about 8:30 a.m. Monday warning of “shrapnel bombs” in four buildings. 
 
 “[Be] quick for they will go off soon,” the message warned, according to the FBI, which said Kim admitted to adding the word “shrapnel” because it sounded more dangerous. 
 
 The threat prompted the university to evacuate three buildings in Harvard Yard—Emerson, Sever, and Thayer halls—as well as the massive Science Center nearby, just as the 9 a.m. exams were beginning. Coming eight months after the Boston Marathon attack, the threat drew a swarm of law enforcement agencies and attracted international media attention. 
 
 The search for possible explosives disrupted the Cambridge campus for much of the day and forced an array of exams to be postponed. 
 
 According to an FBI affidavit, Kim used a disposable, temporary e-mail address and a temporary Internet Protocol Address to send his warning—with the subject line “bombs placed around campus”—to two university officials, Harvard police, and the student newspaper. 
 
 But university officials determined by the end of the day that Kim had used a Harvard wireless network to create the secretive IP, prompting an FBI agent and a campus police officer to interview him in his dorm Monday night. 
 
 The agent, Thomas M. Dalton, said Kim admitted to authoring the hoax, picking Emerson Hall—the site of his exam—and three other targets. 
 
 Then he walked to his exam. “According to Kim, upon hearing the alarm, he knew that his plan had worked,” Dalton wrote in the affidavit. 
 
 The bomb-hoax charge under federal law carries a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a $250,000 fine. 
 
 Harvard officials thanked law enforcement in a statement Tuesday, saying the hoax caused “significant disruption to our campus and a difficult time for many.” 
 
 “We are aware that a member of our community has been arrested in relation to this matter and are saddened by the details alleged in the criminal complaint,” officials said. 
 
 Kim’s family could not immediately be reached. 
 
 On an undated biography on the website for Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Kim identified himself as a research assistant helping to analyze “partisan taunting.” He also called himself a writer for the Harvard International Review and a dancer with the Harvard Breakers. 
 
 In addition, he claimed to enjoy “playing pool, trying new restaurants, watching terrible cult films, and playing with his Mini Schnauzer puppy.” 
 
 One of the editors-in-chief of the review, junior Mathilde Montpetit of Boston, said Kim went through an introductory process—writing an article and doing sample editing—as a freshman early last year, then resigned. 
 
 Montpetit said most of her friends quickly assumed the bomb threat was a hoax, and that few around her were on edge. But she called it a waste of Harvard time and taxpayer resources. 
 
 “I don’t know if he deserves five years in prison, but it was definitely stupid,” Montpetit said. 
 
 Eric Moskowitz can be reached at eric.moskowitz@globe.com. ||||| SOMERVILLE — Exams were postponed and several buildings were closed and searched at Tufts University after someone set a school employee’s car on fire and left a threatening note near the blaze early Monday morning. 
 
 Authorities responded to the burning car, parked behind the student health services center on Professors Row, around 4:45 a.m., officials said. 
 
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 The note, found shortly afterward hanging on a door on the side of the building, stated there were bombs in Cabot Hall, Braker Hall, Cohen Auditorium, and Tisch Library, officials said. The note also drew a link between the fiery vehicle and contentious negotiations between Tufts administrators, a private contractor, and union custodial workers. 
 
 State Police spokesman David Procopio said an investigation into the threats and the fire, and whether they were related, was ongoing, but the incident was being treated as a suspected arson. 
 
 All the buildings reopened just before 2 p.m., but only after many students missed exams, which will be rescheduled. 
 
 Ceili Hale, who lives off campus but around the corner from where investigators gathered to inspect the car fire, said she woke up to a series of e-mails from school officials that warned students to stay away from certain buildings and remain in their dormitories. 
 
 “I thought it was someone who didn’t want to do finals,” said Hale, a junior. “But I guess it was a lot more serious than that.” 
 
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 The investigation is being handled by State Police, the state fire marshal’s office, and Somerville, Medford, and Tufts police. Boston police K-9 units and agents from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives were also at the scene. 
 
 Mary Jeka, senior vice president of university relations, said during a press conference that the school had received “confidential information” on Sunday that there would be a “disruption” of some kind on campus. The tip made no mention of a specific threat and was forwarded to police, she said. 
 
 EVAN SAYLES FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE Firefighters extinguished a car fire Monday at Tufts University. 
 
 Jeka acknowledged that the message on the door of the health services building made reference to janitors on campus. 
 
 Last year, the school reorganized its janitorial employees in response to recommendations from the company that runs the workforce, she said. 
 
 “It is not at all clear that that is the reason for this action,’’ Jeka told reporters. 
 
 “I really don’t want to make a statement and to tie what happened this morning to any current issue like that until the law enforcement has had the time to investigate it,” she said. 
 
 The union that represents the janitors and a student group that supported the janitors said they were appalled. 
 
 “This goes completely contrary to what we stand for,” said Roxana Rivera, vice president of Service Employees International Union 32BJ. “Our job is to peacefully advocate for working families, so we’re saddened by these events.” 
 
 A leader from the Tufts Labor Coalition, the student group, said it was in no way involved. 
 
 “I was shocked . . . Tufts Labor Coalition had absolutely no part in this,’’ said Anna Gaebler. “We find this tactic to be absolutely reprehensible and antithetical to our mission as a group.’’ 
 
 Classes concluded last week at Tufts, but many students were still on campus to take final exams and prepare for commencement later this month. 
 
 Greg Berumen, a freshman, said he was hoping to take one of his last tests to help boost his final grade, but he understood the need to put the exam on hold as police investigated. He was dismayed by the threats. 
 
 “It was a little alarming and kind of scary,” he said. 
 
 Senior Walker Kehoe had two exams scheduled on Monday. One of them, he said, was canceled, so he opted to play soccer with a friend on the field adjacent to where officials were investigating the car fire. 
 
 “It’s kind of inconvenient,” he said, unsure of when he could make up the test. “I’m ready to be done with school.” 
 
 More from the scene: 
 
 Dina Rudick/Globe staff Tufts University said a car fire was discovered Monday in the back of 124 Professors Row, and a note containing a bomb threat was also found near the scene. 
 
 Boston Police at Tufts with K-9 unit pic.twitter.com/lKwgJPPlKF — Steve Annear (@steveannear) May 9, 2016 ||||| Tufts University’s Medford/Somerville campus. (Tufts) 
 
 Tufts University resumed “limited operations” Monday after a morning bomb threat and car fire prompted the search of several campus buildings. 
 
 Police and firefighters responding to a car fire early Monday morning discovered a note, which Tufts described in a statement as “suspicious,” stating that bombs were present in about a half-dozen campus buildings, which were evacuated and searched throughout the morning. The buildings were cleared by early afternoon. 
 
 “Students, faculty, and staff are free to move about campus,” the university said in a statement about 1:45 p.m. “For the peace of mind of the community and due to the ongoing investigation, there will be an enhanced police presence for the remainder of the day.” 
 
 Classes for the semester have concluded, though many finals were postponed as a result of the investigation. 
 
 Arts and sciences and engineering exams scheduled for 7 p.m. will be held as planned, though the school encouraged students who feel unable to take those exams because of the morning events to contact their instructors and seek mental-health services. 
 
 The threat was discovered after authorities responded to a car fire at 124 Professors Row, on the main campus in Medford/Somerville, about two miles north of Harvard University. The Tufts website lists 124 Professors Row as the location of the school’s health center. 
 
 Bomb threats against Tufts probed after car fire https://t.co/TJZCKM50rr pic.twitter.com/DBpxVtmEOo — WCVB-TV Boston (@WCVB) May 9, 2016 
 
 The threat was found taped to the center’s door, the Boston Globe reported, citing the school and its own review of the note. The letter made apparent reference to a long-running dispute between Tufts administrators and the campus janitorial staff, the Globe reported. 
 
 The Tufts Labor Coalition, a group of students who protested the layoffs, distanced itself from the fire and threat, describing both as “completely contrary” to its values. 
 
 “TLC’s goal is to create fair and safe conditions for Tufts workers,” it said in a statement. “TLC would never act in a way that would bring danger to any member of the Tufts community.” 
 
 A Massachusetts State Police bomb squad assisted in the investigation, a spokesman for the state fire marshal told The Washington Post. 
 
 For five days last spring, several Tufts students went on a hunger strike to prevent the long-planned layoff of 35 janitors, The Post reported at the time. 
 
 The school posted an official announcement of the car-fire and bomb-threat discovery to its website shortly after 6:30 a.m. 
 
 This post has been updated.
– Harvard University has reopened four buildings on campus after evacuating them this morning due to a bomb scare, the Harvard Crimson reports. Sever Hall, Thayer Hall, and Emerson Hall were all cleared in time for afternoon exams, and Harvard Yard was reopened before 2pm. An email tip prompted the threat, reports the Boston Globe, but a Harvard police spokesman refused to confirm. No explosives have yet been found. The school posted alerts on its emergency page and its Twitter account, clarifying that there were no reports of actual explosions, and that the evacuations were ordered out of an "abundance of caution."