Ignorance is bliss

Last Wednesday, police swept Palmer Square for a suspected bomb after an anonymous tip. The tip had been viewed as specific enough to be credible, initiating a four-hour, exhaustive search that found no bomb. While hundreds were displaced from their homes, shops and offices as the police searched, students across the street were for the most part unaware of the situation. There was no University-wide e-mail or any alerting of the student body. The lack of information was precisely what the University needed.

Suppose that the University community had been informed that morning; what would we have done? Palmer Square was already cordoned off and evacuated, so it’s not as if we could have walked through it even if we were unaware of what was happening. At worst, someone would have been mildly inconvenienced after having walked 15 minutes only to find that Kitchen Kapers was inaccessible. In other words, there would not have been a large benefit to alerting the University community when something major was happening near campus.

The problems caused by alerting the community as soon as a potential threat appears have, historically, been noticeable. In 2009, after a Princeton student had walked across campus with a replica gun, Public Safety sent out the now-infamous notification to students 80 minutes after the gun sighting. A 'Prince' article detailed some of the reactions people had to the possible threat. One student, who decided to take a shower, said: “When I went to the shower, I was surprisingly very paranoid ... Some guy walked in, I saw the door open, so I had my brush ready for the attack, and I saw that it was just another civilian such as myself.” This is a very normal reaction to the threat of an on-campus gunman, and yet, it is completely irrational. Certainly people need to know when a potential risk exists on campus, but defending oneself with a brush would not have been a good strategy had the threat been real. These reactions are costs in the cost-benefit analysis of whether or not to alert the community (or part of the community) of a potential threat.

The irrational response never disappears. The feeling of being under attack by an unknown enemy drives the irrationality, since there exists an insufficiency of information. Almost always, when a potential threat emerges and Public Safety must decide whether or not to alert the University community, the assailants are unknown. In the case of the Palmer Square bomb threat, not even the identity of the tipster responsible for instigating the search is known. A message from the Princeton Telephone and E-mail Notification System would frighten the community. For some situations, fear is necessary to keep people safely away from danger. All too often, however, the danger is immobilizing.

There is a lot to be said for a well-timed, well-targeted notification from PTENS. The March 2009 replica gun incident was quickly resolved when the student involved became aware that Public Safety was looking for him, thanks to a notification from PTENS. Sometimes the right information can get an issue resolved immediately. In March 2010, a bomb scare required evacuation of the construction site for the new Frick Chemistry Laboratory, as well as nearby Jadwin Hall, Icahn Hall and the architecture laboratory. Public Safety sent emergency notifications only to those who occupied those buildings. The problem was kept distant from the rest of the University even though it was an on-campus emergency.

Limiting the number of people in the know helps to keep situations contained. The bomb scare at Palmer Square was practically a non-event. It was a mild point of interest in the following day’s news but not an important local incident. Well-handled informing of the public can make a large difference to how a situation is perceived. The recent printer toner bomb, intercepted in London en route from Yemen to the United States via UPS, was described as being “17 minutes from detonation” by the French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux. His assertion has since been disputed. Such sensationalism only helps to sell newspapers, not inform the public. Its only result is to needlessly rile up the public.

Had I known of what was going on at Palmer Square, there would have been nothing productive that I could have done with that new information and quite a few unproductive things I would have done. Not knowing the information that I did not need to know kept me happier. Therefore, I am quite pleased to say that I was blissfully ignorant last Wednesday.

Christopher Troein is an economics major from Windsor, England. He can be reached at ctroein@princeton.edu.