image description — The Paresky Center was one of the buildings initially evacuated, according to a post on one of the college's official social media accounts.

Updated July 11, 2024 02:10PM

Bomb Threat that Closed Williams Campus Deemed 'Not Credible'

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires.com
12:17PM / Thursday, July 11, 2024Print Story | Email Story

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Williams College Thursday briefly closed its campus and sent all non-essential employees home for the day after a reported bomb threat that later was deemed to be "not credible."

Late Thursday morning, the college sent an alert to its employees that the school was investigating a threat to several college buildings and ordering the evacuation of Faculty House, the Paresky Center, Mission dorm and "athletics and all libraries."

By about 11:45 a.m., the college released the same information in a post on social media, and shortly before noon, it announced on "X" (formerly Twitter), "Please evacuate and avoid area until further notice."

Just after 2 p.m., the school announced to its personnel that, "The bomb threat was determined to be not credible."

The school said that dining services would be available for the small number of students on campus for the summer term from 2 to 7 p.m. at Faculty House and that faculty and staff who needed to access their offices on Thursday could do so after 3 p.m.

All buildings and offices were slated to be open for business as usual on Friday morning.

This was the second apparent false alarm on campus in the last couple of months. In May, a suspicious package reported in the college's science center led to the evacuation of some buildings and a visit from the State Police bomb squad.

This time around, the college did not indicate finding any objects related to the threat.

A college spokesperson said in an email correspondence: "After a thorough investigation, and in collaboration with the Williamstown Police Department, the Williamstown Fire Department, the Commonwealth Fusion Center, the Massachusetts State Police Bomb Squad and Northern Berkshire EMS, the college identified the threat as not credible. The college is aware that at least two other colleges received similar bomb threats."

During the last evacuation, town first responders closed a road near the science center. This time, as traffic proceeded normally throughout the incident on Park Street, which is flanked by two of the buildings mentioned in a college Tweet, Paresky and Faculty House.

The first indication of a return to normalcy on Thursday came at about 1:25 p.m., when college Dining Services personnel began returning to Faculty House. One employee said they had received the "all clear" about 20 minutes prior to their return.

Tags: evacuation,

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Mount Greylock School Committee OKs Updated Policy on Seclusion, Restraint

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
05:57AM / Tuesday, August 25, 2026

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Mount Greylock School Committee recently approved an updated policy on time-outs, seclusion and the physical restraint of students.

The policy is based on updated state regulations that came down last winter. Superintendent Joseph Bergeron told the panel at its August meeting that his office waited on recommendations from the Massachusetts Association of School Committees that were released in May and ran the proposed changes past the district's legal counsel.

That timing — and an expectation from the commonwealth that districts have the updated policy in place for the start of the 2026-27 academic year — led to an expedited process for the School Committee, which did not do a first read with a vote at a subsequent meeting as is its practice.

"Policy JKAA speaks to the ways the school district and our procedures shall abide by the updated state regulations," Bergeron said. "We're not going to have a lot of leeway.

"Nothing about the way we interact with our students on a day-to-day basis is being shifted by this."

For example, the commonwealth does not allow schools to use "seclusion," or, "the involuntary confinement of a student alone in a room or area, with or without adult supervision," except some extreme cases, like when, "when student behavior poses an imminent threat of assault, or imminent serious physical harm to self or others, but only if safeguards are accounted for," the updated policy reads.

"From the state's perspective and my perspective, the idea of locking a child in a room without adult supervision is something we've never done," Bergeron said. "And it's something the state wants to make explicitly that nobody ever does."

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