HIRAM - Hiram College was one of three college campuses briefly evacuated Friday after receiving bomb threats.
The northeast Ohio school received an email bomb threat about 4 p.m. and ordered everyone on campus to evacuate. Hiram spokesman Tom Ford said safety teams with bomb-sniffing dogs checked "room by room, building by building" on campus, which is about 35 miles southeast of Cleveland, where about 1,300 students are enrolled.
The campus was deemed safe and reopened about five hours later.
Anna Gray, a junior at the college and Niles native, said she and about 20 other students went to a church down the street following the threat.
Gray said students were alerted via text message of the threat and that most students drove off campus. She said she lives on campus.
She said authorities notified students about 9 p.m. that they could return to campus about 9:30 p.m.
Gray said the mood among the students she was with was good. She said there was no fear among the students she was with, although they were wondering if they would be able to eat on campus once the all-clear was given or if they would have to fend for themselves.
''It's more of an annoyance than an inconvenience,'' she said.
The school posted on its website that the dining hall would be open until midnight.
Trevor Foster of Champion, who plays baseball for the Terriers, said he was at a baseball conditioning session when his coach told the team about the threat.
Foster said he went back to his room to get his and his roommate's things. He said they then got in his roommate's truck and drove off campus.
He said the people he was with were anxious to get off campus as quickly as possible. ''We pretty much got everything together and left as fast as we could,'' he said.
Earlier Friday, the campuses of the University of Texas at Austin and North Dakota State University in Fargo had been deemed safe by early afternoon, and authorities were working to determine whether those threats were related.
The threats on the campuses in Texas and North Dakota ended as false alarms after tens of thousands of people followed urgently worded evacuation orders, one of which some worried didn't come fast enough.
Both of those campuses emptied at quick but orderly paces Friday morning, though students acknowledged an air of confusion about what was going on. The threats coming as violent protests outside U.S. embassies in the Middle East also stirred nervous tension among some students, and Texas officials acknowledged global events were taken into account.
Also Friday, Valparaiso University in Indiana increased security and posted a warning to students on its website after a vague threat was discovered scrawled in graffiti. The school said the threat claimed "dangerous and criminal activity" would occur during the university's daily chapel break.
The FBI and local authorities searched the campus but found nothing suspicious.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.