An anonymous threat on Jodel resulted in Lund University closing their doors and shutting out 50 000 people for one day. Such a drastic measure might have cost millions, according to new calculations made by Universitetsläraren.
The night before the 12th of October, Jodel exploded in Lund. An anonymous person had published a threatening message on Lund’s Jodel-feed earlier on the Sunday, which many users saw as something serious and reported the threat to the police.
The University Board are pleased
The police, in turn, also took the threat seriously and put in more people during the Sunday evening. At midnight, a few people from the University decided to keep the school closed during the Monday – one of them being Principal Torbjörn von Schantz and Per Gustafson, Head of Security at the University.
“I think that everyone has done a great job. It’s good to see how extremely efficiently the communication worked and how well media passed on the message”, said Principal Torbjörn von Schantz to Lundagård, a few hours after the University had opened back up.
Has been met with criticism
But not everyone were convinced that it was the right way to go. In an article, the University was met with criticism from the police for closing the University to begin with. According to the police, the threat was not serious enough to demand operational efforts and business could have gone on like usual.
But Per Gustafson, Head of Security at the University, was pleased with the decision to close the University.
“Under the circumstances at the time when we made the decision, it was the right decision”, Per Gustafson said to the newspaper at the time.
The same threat that was posted on the Jodel-feed in Lund had previously been posted in other cities too, but there the Universities decided to stay open. In Lund, they chose to better be safe than sorry. But the decision did not come without a cost.
Might have cost millions
According to new calculations from the magazine Universitetsläraren, keeping the school closed for a day has most likely cost millions. The magazine writes that the University’s labour costs were at 265 million kronor, with non-wage labour costs at 130 million kronor. That means that the labour costs for one day are 18 million kronor. If only half of the University’s work-force chose not to work during that day, there would be a production loss of almost 9 million kronor.
“Impossible to calculate”
The University itself has not performed a similar calculation and according to Susanne Kristensson, Head of Administration, it is impossible to calculate something like this.
“We cannot measure what the actual “production loss”, because of this, is. Many worked from home through their computers or phones. Students chose to study at home, at friends’ places, in libraries etc.”, she writes in an e-mail to Universitetsläraren. She also adds:
“The only thing we can know for sure is that the costs of not closing the University at the time could have been much worse”.
