This story is a collaboration between Capital B and Open Campus.
HAMPTON, Virginia — Just weeks into the start of the fall semester, Nick Jones was walking back to his Hampton University dorm when he got an alert that the campus was on lockdown.
“Yo … should I be outside?” he thought to himself, but really, he was only slightly concerned. It was a terroristic threat the day after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed on a college campus more than 2,000 miles away at Utah State University.
Jones said he knew it was an empty threat.
Hampton University is situated in a secluded area on a peninsula in Hampton, Virginia. You don’t “accidentally” stumble on campus, Jones and other people at the university said. There’s only one public street that leads there: William R. Harvey Way, named after the recently retired university president.
“When I see a threat, it’s kind of like, whatever,” said Jones, a sophomore political science major from North Carolina. “I don’t really panic till they say they see somebody on campus.”
While students and professors told officials they knew these were merely threats, they still felt some anxiety about the possibilities of the threats becoming real.
As it turned out, Hampton was not alone.
Across the country on Sept. 11, at least seven historically Black colleges and universities were forced into lockdown after a series of terroristic threats the day after Kirk’s death. Although the threats were later deemed not credible, it wasn’t the first time HBCUs were on high alert.
Over the past three years, half of the nation’s 101 HBCUs have received targeted threats of violence, according to a policy brief from the United Negro College Fund. In 2022 alone, 49 HBCUs received bomb threats.
In September, as a new wave of bomb threats rattled campuses caught in battles over free speech and a heightened awareness of political violence, students, administrators and campus police at several Black colleges said they were more prepared this time.
From upgrading technology and installing more cameras to increasing the presence of uniformed officers and mental health support for students, four colleges Capital B interviewed said they were better equipped to safeguard against future threats.
There’s also been some federal support. In 2022, the Biden administration launched an FBI investigation and encouraged HBCUs to apply for the School Emergency Response to Violence (Project SERV) program. It funds short-term education-related services for institutions to help them recover from violent or traumatic events. In 2024, the administration announced $2.4 million in Project SERV grants for affected HBCUs.
“The funding, all the things matters because it’s necessary and it’s needed,” said Mahogany Waldon, director of university communications at Hampton.
The year that changed everything
As dozens of bomb threats roiled campuses during Black History Month in 2022, Dietra Trent stepped into the role as executive director of the White House initiative on HBCUs.
“It seemed like almost every day we were hearing something, another threat,” Trent recalled thinking at the time.
As she traveled from the Washington metro area to Black colleges across the country, she found students were conflicted about whether to take the situation seriously. Many were scared. Others told Trent they knew the threats were empty, yet they couldn’t help but to let their minds wander about when the threats could become real.
“When we get calls and they’re bomb threats, the toll that it takes on our campuses is significant,” said Trent, who has spent more than two decades in higher education administration. “Not only is it psychologically and mentally deflating, but it’s also a matter of the resources.”
Black colleges had to pull together financial and physical resources quickly to ensure that faculty, students and staff were safe, she said.
Institutions were divided on how to ease their communities, while the people causing the hysteria remained at large. The threats were later traced back to six “tech savvy” juveniles.
Trent said the campus conversations she had led the Biden administration to support Black colleges through the Project SERV funds, which are typically given to K-12 institutions that have experienced violence. Trent and others in the Cabinet also connected HBCU administrators with the FBI.
Every Black college that applied for the grant received it, she said. Several institutions said their funds would be used on mental health resources.
This fall, Capital B filed a request to view the HBCU grant applications through the Department of Education, but had not received a response due to the government shutdown.
Hampton University received more than $214,000 in SERV funds, which Student Counseling Center director Kristie Norwood said went toward hiring two licensed clinical professionals. Her staff, which has grown from four to eight since she started in 2019, works closely with Hampton University Police Department and often includes them in mental health training.
“If my officers run across somebody that appears to be having issues, we’ll reach out to the counseling center and say, ‘Hey, you may want to know about this person,’” said David Glover, chief of police at Hampton University.
It’s crucial for Hampton students to see the police officers as humans and safe individuals, Norwood said, especially with the sociopolitical climate right now.
As a private university, Glover said they take advantage of grant opportunities whenever possible. In 2022, Hampton University received $1 million from Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin as a part of an effort to increase security profiles at colleges.
Lockdowns, anxiety and security
Jones, the Hampton student, said he wasn’t worried about safety during the lockdown, and that administrators enforced safety measures and provided mental health support through virtual peer counseling.
Hampton had already required identification checks for anyone entering campus from the public road. To enter the building, students said you have to scan your ID and show it to security once inside campus buildings. Glover said these contracted guards have been doing this since he started at the university 14 years ago.
Clifton Weaver and Jade Little were both in their dorm rooms in September when the lockdown went into effect. Like Jones, Weaver and Little, both freshmen, said they are desensitized to terroristic threats because they also experienced them in high school.
Weaver, 18, who is from Baltimore, said he assumed something like this would happen after he found out that Kirk was killed the day before.
Little, 18, from Tampa, Florida, said her predominantly Black high school was a target of similar threats. She assumes that the motives are similar to the motive behind the nationwide bomb threats in September.
Still, their faith in their university’s security system was strong.
While Hampton students may be secluded, the majority of HBCUs, especially those on the East Coast, are located in major cities and/or metropolitan areas and have open campuses, which can add to concerns about public safety.
Morgan State University student Malaya Mason, 20, said that police and weapons don’t make her feel safe; they make her feel the opposite. Yet, the majority of those in uniform at her university are Black, which put her at ease, she said.
The junior said she’s seen Morgan State add campus police officers and security guards — but she can’t help but wonder what the training is for the guards.
Over the past few years, Morgan State has utilized grants to enhance public safety on its Baltimore campus. Lance Hatcher, the chief of police at the university, said Morgan State has increased its sworn officers by 60% and expanded security by 20% since the fall of 2022.
Through her studies, Mason knows that threats to Black colleges, especially those with revolutionary backgrounds like Morgan State, can be traced back to the 1960s.
“When it comes to the rise of fascism and the rise of conservatism, this is something that has been in the works,” she said. “I realized that this is the pendulum swing, and the pendulum is clearly swinging one way.”
Changing the narrative with the help of advanced technology
As HBCUs are navigating how to handle terroristic threats, administrators are also trying to shield students from gun violence on and off campus. During this year’s homecoming season, shootings disrupted celebrations at several schools. And in December, a Kentucky State University student was killed in an on-campus shooting after a suspect fired shots into a residence hall. The motive and the university’s security protocol remain unclear.
In 2023, Morgan State received harsh criticism from local media outlets after a shooting happened near the campus during homecoming week. The incident was framed as yet another shooting at a troubled university without providing context about Baltimore’s broader issue of crime.
Mason, who loves policy and looking into Baltimore’s history of segregation and redlining, said these narratives are disheartening to hear, but she’s not surprised. To her, painting Black colleges as violent is a convenient stereotype when educational beacons are placed within inner cities, specifically Black cities, she said.
“It is upsetting hearing, ‘Oh well, Morgan is just in the hood, Morgan is just inflicted with gun violence,’” Mason said.
The university has invested in weapon detection technology and a ShotSpotter system, which can pinpoint the exact location of gunshots and connect them to live feeds.
“Even prior to this, [Morgan State President David] Wilson secured quite a few million dollars to upgrade our camera system,” Hatcher, the police chief, said. “We were using analog and some of the systems, some of the cameras, were outdated and that sort of thing. So there was a significant investment made.”
Cameras that were cataloged were changed to digital cameras, and lighting was also improved on campus.
“We invested in weapons detection technology because weapons in the United States as a whole have increased.”
Lance Hatcher, Morgan State University police chief
In August 2024, the Maryland Higher Education Commission awarded $18.75 million in campus safety grants to the state’s colleges and universities, including the state’s four HBCUs. Morgan State received $2.9 million.
“We invested in weapons detection technology because weapons in the United States as a whole have increased,” Hatcher said. “Even carrying weapons, whether legally or illegally, are very prevalent within our society.”
North Carolina A&T State University, located in Greensboro, North Carolina, recently beta-tested a similar technology that provides drone-based incident response and gunshot detection services, said Robert Hassell, the chief of the university police department.
While technology using artificial intelligence has received push back from some communities for its errors, Hassell said that is why the university will do its own testing to see if it’s a right fit for the university.
Aside from traditional ID checks and an application that students and faculty can download for emergency alerts, the campus continues to apply for grants to find ways to be more proactive in protecting its students from threats.
There are currently more than 800 cameras on campus, which are connected to an application that integrates all camera feeds, calls into the university’s emergency call center and license plate readers on campus.
If a call comes through, whether it be a suspicion or a weapon-related call, the application could integrate all live details from different platforms right at the chief’s fingertips.
“If this were 20, 30 years ago, people would think, ‘Oh, our big brothers are always watching,’” Hassell said about the advanced technology. “But now, in today’s society, I want to say it’s almost commonplace for this type of technology to be there, and we don’t even think about it.”
These improvements are funded through security fees students are charged per credit hour, as well as state funds that the university has received over the years.
Creating safe spaces and support systems
Less than a mile away is Bennett College, a small women’s college with around 200 students.
While Bennett hasn’t received threats at the rate of larger colleges like A&T, which announced more than 15,000 students were enrolled in fall 2025, the college is still taking a proactive approach.
Years ago, the campus had almost no cameras, said Jermaine Thomas, the executive director of campus operations. At the college, he wears several hats overseeing the public safety department, counseling services, facilities, and the health center.
“Bennett’s so small, you know, we probably weren’t on the radar,” he told Capital B. “But then you think about it, during the last presidential election, we probably raised the threat level because it was a Black woman [running] for president.”
While Bennett wasn’t a target in 2022, the administration used the threats against North Carolina A&T as leverage to secure $450,000 in federal Title III funding to upgrade the campus to at least 60 cameras, Thomas said.
At one point, there were no security measures in place for entering campus buildings. Now, students and faculty enter buildings using an app on their phone.
Thomas said the intuition also has wellness pods, which are remodeled shipping containers transformed into calming spaces that include a bed, TV, and de-stress activities that bring mental health access and resources to the students.
“We went from two counselors to maybe nine different providers for our students,” he said. “We really put a big circle around our students and a big hug around them as far as that mental health aspect.”
Thomas is a member of a group of Black college administrators who keep up on safety trends within the Black college space.
HBCUs remain in touch with one another through Law Enforcement Executives and Administrators, a nonprofit organization with administrators, police chiefs, executives, and security directors serving Black colleges. The organization has been around since 1999.
Those in the community often use this as a resource to talk about how they’re keeping their campuses safe, what is working for one institution and maybe what isn’t working.
Back in Virginia, after the most recent incident in September, Glover said the university was able to get the mayor and police chief in Newport News, representatives from the state police, the mayor of Hampton, the Hampton Police Division, and the FBI in the same room less than three hours after the threat was received via email.
Over at Morgan State, Mason, the student, said she sees the university doing its best with limited staff, but said she would like more done in the mental health space.
“We do have an abundance of telehealth resources and being able to have access to therapy sessions without insurance,” she said. “But I think, especially in a time like post-COVID, we need human connection. I just don’t think that they’re very aware of how widespread these issues actually are.”
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